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How to Grow 

One Hundred Bushels of Corn Per Acre 

On Worn Soils 



WILLIAM C. SMITH 

OF INDIANA 



' CORN IS KING " 



SECOND EDITION 
REVISED, ENLARGED AND ILLUSTRATED 



CINCINNATI 

STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 

1912 






Copyright 1910 

William C. Smith 

Copyright 1912 

Stewart & Kidd Company 



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s£CU300806 

■•i,-r, r 





^HE farmer of the past scorned the study 
of scientific agriculture. He found 
the soil rich in the elements that pro- 
duce storehouses of riches. He touched it 
with the wand of greed and neglect — it was 
strangled with its wasted fertility. 

("HE modern farmer became a student 
of scientific agriculture. He found 
the soil depleted and despoiled of its 
fertility. He touched it with the wand of 
his knowledge — it became rich in the ele- 
ments that produce a hundredfold. 

fHERE grows in Nature's Garden the 
plants with which the farmer can re- 
store his sick, worn-out soils. These 
plants are the silent working forces of 
Nature that do their work better than any 
artificial agency devised by man; thus it 
behooves us to study Nature's way of doing 
things. 

"Accuse not Nature^ she hath done her 
part. Do thou but thine" — Milton. 

5 




PROEM 

TO FIRST EDITION 

IN a little frame farmliouse on a pioneer's farm, in 
the Indian Reserve, out of which Howard County, 
Indiana, was carved, the author first saw the light 
of day. His first vision of the world was through the 
six by six glass windows out across the door yard and 
public highway into the " clearin'." His father, a sturdy 
pioneer, had settled in this wilderness abounding in gi- 
gantic walnut, poplar and oak trees, interspersed with 
the smaller varieties of timber and underbrush, and by 
strength of muscle alone, was subduing the forests and 
making the land to blossom with the fruits of the hus- 
bandman. 

The pioneer father is sleeping now. He sleeps beside 
the faithful wife who gave him companionship in the 
days of his toil. He sleeps in the beautiful land made 
so by the strength, toil and endurance of the pioneer. 

To the memory of that pioneer father, who loved the 
soil, this book is dedicated; and as the pioneer fathers 
subdued the land from the wilderness and gave it to their 
children, rich in the fertility that Nature gave it, may the 
children so farm and treat it that that fertility may in- 
crease and not decrease as the years go by. 

The author loves the soil or else this book would have 
ne'er been born. 

7 



8 PROEM TO FIRST EDITION 

Loving the soil as he does, his indignation is aroused 
when he sees it despoiled by the soil robber. If this 
book will only awaken the conscience of the soil de- 
spoiler, the author will feel that his efforts have not been 
in vain. 

William C. Smith. 
Delphi, Indiana, 

January, 1910. 



PROEM 

TO SECOND EDITION 

THE first edition of this book is exhausted. It 
having met with such an unexpected, flattering 
reception, a second edition is ventured. 

In the two years that the first edition has been before 
the pubHc, the author has received so many commenda- 
tions from the press and people regarding the merits and 
helps of his book, that he feels that he must have touched 
a key note of worn soil restoration, the greatest and most 
important problem for solution now before the people. 

He, therefore, perceives that it is a greater honor to 
have so important a part in this great soil restoration 
movement, than to be honored with any high office in the 
gift of the people. 

No nation can become a power without a fertile soil. 
When a nation's soil becomes worn and loses its power 
to produce paying crops, then death and decay is written 
on its very vitals. 

If we would have our nation to continue its place at 
the head of nations, we must maintain the fertility of 
our soils and prevent, by every possible means, their ex- 
haustion. 

It is the hope of the author that this book and its les- 
sons may play an important part in so solving the soil 

9 



10 PROEM TO SECOND EDITION 

problem, that our soils will be kept to the highest state 
of fertility, that this nation may continue great. 

William C. Smith. 
Delphi, Indiana, 

January, 1912. <. 



INTRODUCTION 

TO FIRST EDITION 

ABANDONED farms and decreasing production 
of our farm lands is the present-day menace of 
our country. Increasing population, decreasing 
fertility of our soils and fewer acres of new land opened 
for settlement, brings us each day nearer the solution of 
the problem, how shall we feed our people? 

The answer to the question is the " Renovation of 
Worn-out Soils " so that they will again produce as they 
did when our forefathers subdued them from the wilder- 
ness that held them in subjection for centuries. 

Renovation of the Soil — what does it mean? 

It means to make the soil over again, to restore it to 
freshness and vigor — to renew it. 

Too many American farmers have gone upon the 
principle that their land will never wear out. Their 
fathers entered upon land covered with the virgin forest, 
rich in all the elements that make good soil ; the forests 
were subdued and the land brought into cultivation; 
bountiful crops were produced because the soil was well 
supplied with humus, nitrogen, potash and other elements 
found in first class soils. Year after year bumper crops 
were gathered from these lands, the pioneer died, and 
his sons and sons' sons continued to farm these lands in 

II 



12 INTRODUCTION TO FIRST EDITION 

the same manner and with the same methods as they 
were farmed by the pioneer. 

It did not seem possible to the sons and sons' sons 
that these rich lands could ever reach the point of ex- 
haustion, or that the time would come when they must 
be farmed and treated in a different manner than when 
they were first cleared and planted, yet that very time 
has come to millions of acres of American soils. 

Millions of acres of our land that once produced from 
seventy-five to one hundred bushels of corn per acre will 
not now produce twenty bushels to the acre. These 
acres have gone into " agricultural bankruptcy." 

Being confronted with this condition, what can we do 
to remedy it? Is there a remedy and is the remedy a 
sure and quick one ? The remedy must be quick, for we 
cannot wait fifty years as England did to restore our 
soils. 

The purpose of this book is to give the remedy and to 
prove that it is a sure and quick one. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Proem To First Edition 7 

Proem To Second Edition 9 

Introduction ^^ 

CHAPTER I. 
Soil '9 

CHAPTER II. 
Drainage ^7 

CHAPTER III. 
Organic Matter 35 

CHAPTER IV. 
Soil Ventilation 45 

CHAPTER V. 
Plowing 51 

CHAPTER VI. 
Soil Covering ^ 

CHAPTER VII. 
How to Produce and Get Organic Matter Into the Soil 75 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Rye 8t 

CHAPTER IX. 
Hungarian ^ 

CHAPTER X. 

Sand, or Hairy Vetch 95 

13 



14 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XI. 
Alfalfa 113 

CHAPTER XH. 
Sweet Clover 123 

CHAPTER Xin. 
Red Clover 129 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Author's Method of Restoring Worn andWorn-out Soils. 137 

CHAPTER XV. 
King Corn 145 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Culture of Corn 159 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Sweet Corn 165 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
A Chapter of Don't Forgets I7S 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Conclusion 185 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Frontispiece 2 

" The Clearin' " 6 

The Original Soil Builders in the Timber Belt 18 

Plowing Under Organic Matter 34 

A Fine Crop of Organic Matter For Plowing Under 44 

Nature's Plows and Cultivators at Winter Rest 50 

A Double Disc Plow 54 

The Spalding Deep TiUing Machine 60 

Plowing Under Corn Stalks With Deep TilHng Machine 64 

A Fine Soil Covering 68 

A Young Vetch Plant Showing Nitrogen Nodules on Its Roots 74 

Vetch Plant Taken From Frozen Soil 80 

A Bunch of Vetch Taken From Under Ice and Water 88 

A Field of Vetch in Full Bloom 94 

Vetch Stems Showing Bloom and Seed Pods 102 

Vetch Plants Taken in Winter From Top of High Sand Ridge. 112 

Vetch Seed, Actual Size 122 

Vetch Seed, Magnified 128 

A Promising Corn Field FertiHzed With Vetch 136 

A Promising Potato Field Fertilized With Vetch 144 

" Well ! I Wonder Which Is the Best Seed Ear " 158 

Ten Good Ears of Boon County White, But Not Prize Getters. 164 

A Good Type of Sweet Corn Seed, Stowell's Evergreen 174 

The Farmer's Best Product If — , 184 

15 




THE ORIGINAL SOIL BUILDERS IN THE TIiMBER BELT. 



CHAPTER I 

SOILS 

SOIL is defined as being the upper stratum of the 
earth or that compound substance which furnishes 
nutriment to plants, or which is particularly 
adapted to support and nourish them. 

Soil varies in depth from a few inches to several feet. 
Clay soils were produced, in part, by the wearing down 
and decomposition of rocks containing aluminous min- 
erals, as granite. Sandy soil consists of fine particles of 
stone placed where found, by the washing of water. 
Muck soil is produced by the decay of large quantities of 
vegetation. 

Clay and sandy soils were originally improved and 
made rich by the addition for centuries of vegetable mat- 
ter such as leaves, weeds and other vegetation. 

We agree with him who said " that the condition of 
the soil is of more importance than its character." Any 
kind of soil, whether clay, sandy or muck, can be made 
to produce large crops if put in proper condition. 

While it is true that clay or heavy soils have more of 
the elements of plant growth in them, yet sandy or muck 
soils by proper treatment will produce as much, if not 
more, than the clay or heavy soils. 

In life's battles the " knowing how " is the entering 
wedge that opens the way to success. So it is in the 

19 



20 SOILS 

treatment of the soils, the " knowing how " to put them 
in condition is the secret of success in growing crops. 

The " whip and spur " method of farming, s<3 long 
practiced in the United States, by which our soils have 
been subjected to the process of getting all you can out 
of them, without the return of anything to maintain or 
increase fertility, has so exhausted vast areas of our 
soils that they no longer produce paying crops. 

Any soil that will not produce paying crops may be 
justly termed a worn-out soil. These worn-out soils 
abound in all parts of our land. Even the rich corn belt 
is not immune from the curse of worn-out soils. 

As a rule a greedy husbandry or a sordid tillage has 
been the producer of worn-out soils, although the decep- 
tive theory of crop rotation has been to a degree a pro- 
ducer of them ; for crop rotation alone will not maintain 
soil fertility. It is but a stimulant. 

Worn-out soils being so extensive, then, has not their 
restoration become the vital problem of the hour? 

It is appalling in going over the country to see so 
many farmers so treating their lands as to bring them 
each day nearer the doom that hangs over all mistreated 
lands, " the abandoned farm." 

Not one farmer in ten is giving his land a chance. 
Not one in ten seems to know how to build up his soil, 
or if he does, he seems to be going on the principle that 
he can get enough from his land to support him during 
his lifetime and does not care for his posterity or future 
generations. 

He is like an ex-governor of a great state who spent 
his declining days on the farm which before he died was 



SOILS 21 

in the worst condition of any in the neighborhood. 
People wondered why a man whose Hfe and business in 
other Hnes had been so successful should allow his farm, 
upon which he was residing, to get into such a condition. 
The governor was interrogated regarding the matter and 
replied, " I am not farming for future generations." 

But it is encouraging to see so many of our great 
financiers, statesmen and people in the humbler walks of 
life becoming interested in soil restoration. Our agri- 
cultural schools are doing a noble work along this line. 

If it be true that the condition of the soil is of more 
importance than its character, then it is not necessary for 
us to go into the discussion of the relative value of the 
different kinds of soils, further than to say that some of 
the extreme sandy soils of New Jersey and Long Island 
have by proper treatment been transformed into the rich- 
est of soils; so have the sandy lands of Holland been 
made worth $3,000 per acre by proper treatment. 

After thorough study, backed up by actual experiment, 
we make the statement that most any sandy or clay soil 
can be made to yield 100 bushels of corn per acre. 

That this can be done, and done quickly, we have 
demonstrated by actual experiments. 

Three elements are necessary to make good soils : 
Potash, phosphorus and nitrogen ; and the last men- 
tioned, according to the best authority, is the " most 
precious, the most important and the most costly." It 
is the element soonest farmed out of fertile soils. 

It is said that " nitrogen promotes growth, phosphorus 
produces fruitfulness and early maturity, and potash 
increases quality." 



22 SOILS 

Most sandy, clay or heavy soils contain sufficient pot- 
ash and phosphorus, but are wholly lacking in humus, 
organic matter and nitrogen. 

One writer says that " corn, oats and wheat are made 
of plant food ; that they consist of ten certain elementary 
substances; that a ton of corn contains a ton of these 
plant food elements, of which only three are secured by 
the corn plant from air and water. The seven are taken 
from the soil. The three elements make up more than 
ninety per cent, of the corn, but the other seven are no 
less essential to plant growth." 

The seven elements mentioned and which make up but 
ten per cent, of the corn crop, are generally found in 
sufficient quantities in all soils to last from 500 to 17,- 
600 years. 

The chief lack of worn-out soils is humus, organic 
matter and nitrogen. 

Humus is the residue of decayed organic matter. 

Organic matter is vegetable or animal matter, like 
leaves, roots, sticks, grasses, manure, straw, etc. 

Therefore that which is left of organic matter after it 
has passed through its process of decay is humus. It 
appears in the soil as a dark-colored substance, and where 
it exists in abundance renders the soil black. 

Soils originally procured their entire supply of humus 
and a large portion of nitrogen from decayed vegetation 
or organic matter, secured in their progress of formation. 

Virgin soils procured their largest supply of nitrogen 
from the air through the work of those soil bacteria who 
make their homes in the root nodules of those plants 
known as the nitrogen-gathering plants or the legumes, 



SOILS 23 

and who draw for their food the nitrogen from the air, 
and drawing more than they need, store the surplus 
in the soil where it becomes available for plant food. 

There are thousands of nitrogen-gathering plants, some 
of them being the trees of the forests. 

Go into the virgin forest such as once covered the 
middle west — and there are some such forests existing 
to-day, but they are not large — and you will see between 
the trees, the ground covered with decayed and decaying 
tree trunks and limbs and a heavy coating of leaves. A 
large number of the trees, and much of the undergrowth 
of these forests, are of the legume family, or the nitrogen 
gatherers of the soil. 

This decaying of trees and leaves, and nitrogen gath- 
ering, has been going on for hundreds of years, thus 
storing up a vast storehouse of precious elements of rich 
soil. Is it any wonder then that lands when first cleared 
of the virgin forest were so rich? 

Continued cultivation of cleared lands without the ad- 
dition of anything to reproduce these original elements 
has exhausted them from our soil, and until we can get 
them back into the soil again, our lands, lacking in these 
elements, will become more worthless as the years go by. 

When we consider that it took centuries to put large 
quantities of nitrogen, organic matter and humus into 
our soils, it seems an impossible task to get back into 
these soils again within a short time the quantities of 
nitrogen, organic matter and humus that took so long to 
put there in the first instance. 

Barnyard manure will put these elements back into the 
soil quicker than any other known agency, but this rem- 



24 SOILS 

edy is impracticable to use on a large scale, because 
sufficient quantities of manure cannot be obtained. 

Commercial fertilizers will not do the work for the 
chief reason that they do not contain the humus, and 
organic matter, and for the further reason that the min- 
eral matter in the soil is sufficiently dissolved by coming 
in contact with water and moisture to furnish the needs 
of plant growth. This dissolution is continued in suffi- 
cient amounts to keep up the necessary supply of min- 
erals, and so the adding of commercial fertilizers will not, 
as a rule, add to the supply of plant food in the soil. 

It is said that there is enough nitrogen in the air over 
an acre of ground to grow 75 bushels of corn per acre 
per year for 600,000 years, but the nitrogen is of no 
value to the soil unless it is drawn into it from the air, 
so that the plant in the soil can assimilate it into its sys- 
tem and thus secure the element that makes vigor of 
growth. But soils need humus and organic matter as 
well as nitrogen. 

We are hearing much of the " Volusia soils," so named 
from a village in New York where first noticed. 

A writer speaking of these soils says : " They are 
worn and unproductive, extend from the Hudson river 
westward across the state through Pennsylvania into 
Ohio. Ten million acres, most part too poor to grow 
clover without fertilizers, are unfit for cultivation. They 
once produced good crops ; fine old houses and barns 
occupy them, which are now unoccupied. These lands 
dressed with liberal quantities of stable manure produce 
good crops. It is said that if these soils are drained, 
supplied with organic matter and their acidity corrected 



SOILS 25 

so that bacteria can thrive in them, they become again 
productive. In fine, these soils need drainage, organic 
matter in the form of manure, green crops plowed under 
and application of lime. It is said that these lands can- 
not get manure because they will not support stock." 

Are not millions of acres of our soil in other states of 
the Union becoming Volusiaized? And is not the secret 
of their restoration contained in the application to them 
of drainage and organic matter ? 



CHAPTER II 

DRAINAGE 

NO soil can be put in good tilth without thorough 
drainage. 
As well try to grow most crops with " wet 
feet " as to attempt to grow them on hot desert soils. Ill 
both instances they will die, because they are out of their 
proper environment. 

Moisture you must have to grow crops, but moisture 
overdone, un-does. 

It is as necessary for plant roots to breathe as human 
beings; shut off soil ventilation and you shut off free 
oxygen from reaching the plant roots, and the plant dies. 

There can be no soil ventilation when the soil is cold, 
compact and saturated with water. Hence the impor- 
tance of drainage, and thorough drainage. 

Drainage is of more importance to worn-out soils than 
it is to new soils. New soils are porous and water will 
easily percolate through them. 

Worn-out soils are hard, compact and non-porous. 
They are absolutely incapable of affording ventilation to 
plant roots. 

Drainage is one of the most effective methods of get- 
ting this needful soil ventilation. 

The more drainage in worn-out soils the better; no 
matter whether water is on the land or not, put into them 

27, 



28 DRAINAGE 

as much ditching as you can. There is no danger of 
getting too many drains. 

Ditches give the proper temperature to the soil, pro- 
mote soil ventilation and conserve soil moisture. 

Most heavy soils are compact and cold, the tempera- 
ture in them is too low, and the soil ventilation too in- 
adequate to be conducive to plant growth. There is no 
room in them for plant roots to perform their proper 
functions. 

Lands improperly drained are slow in drying out, and 
seeding them is delayed beyond the proper season for 
planting, thus giving a shorter growing season. 

It takes more labor to till cold, compact, non-drained 
soils. All kinds of soils are benefited by drainage. 

Drainage, figuratively speaking, opens up the pores of 
the soils so that water from rains and snows will quickly 
enter and percolate through them, down to the drains 
rather than over the surface, preventing to a large extent 
the disastrous results of soil washing. 

Drainage will also prevent the standing of water in the 
low places of our farms and thus eliminate the soured, 
heavy soils found in such spots. 

The greatest advantage to be obtained by plenty of 
drainage is the putting of the soil in that condition of 
porosity, deepness and pulverization, as will prevent 
droughts as well as floods. 

In a thoroughly ditched soil, plant roots at once strike 
deep where they are safe from the onsets of summer 
droughts. 

The experience of years has been that well-drained 



DRAINAGE 29 

soils produce better crops in wet or dry seasons than the 
undrained soils, and experience has also shown that worn 
soils cannot be reclaimed until they are first well ditched. 

In the light of this experience, I cannot too strongly 
impress upon my readers that we must first thoroughly 
drain our soils if we would build them up to a fertile 
stage. 

All drains should be so constructed as to be open at 
both ends, as a drain so constructed will act like a chim- 
ney; the air will go into one end and out the other, and 
the air thus passing through the drain in dry weather is 
condensed into moisture, which is thrown out into the 
soil, made porous by drain construction, and thus fur- 
nishes moisture to the plant roots. 

The source of all drains should terminate in some 
fence row close to the fence, the tile brought up to the 
surface of the ground and properly screened to prevent 
animals, weeds, sticks, or foreign substances from enter- 
ing the drain. 

The mouth of drains should be kept open at all times 
and screened in the same manner. Such a ditch is the 
most valuable asset on the farm. 

Drains should be constructed of not less than six-inch 
tile, and need not ordinarily exceed four feet in depth, 
but no fixed rule as to depth of drain can be given, as 
the undulating character of the soil and the outlet must 
govern the depth. Where lands are too deeply tiled 
there is likely to be a waste of water. 

In constructing drains, the idea of soil ventilation must 
be kept in mind, so it does not matter in all cases whether 



30 DRAINAGE 

a drain will carry water or not; it is useful if it only 
affords ventilation, provided both ends of the drain are 
open. 

The Soils and Crops department of Purdue University 
Experiment station, in their experiments of tiled and un- 
tiled lands, show an average yield of 76.1 bushels of 
corn per acre on tiled land and 61.8 bushels per acre on 
untiled land, or a difference of 14.3 bushels in favor of 
the tiled land. 

This is a money value of $7.15 per acre with corn sell- 
ing at fifty cents per bushel. 

This experiment speaks volumes for drainage and 
shows that a system of good drainage can soon be paid 
for out of the increased yield of crops which it will pro- 
duce. 

At a cost of less than six dollars per acre the author 
constructed a mile of eight and ten inch cement tile 
drain on his " Vetchfalfa Farm," and the larger portion 
of same was of ten inch tile placed at an average depth 
of six feet in order to secure an outlet. 

This system of drainage installed by the author con- 
sists of one main line or outlet of ten inch tile, running 
through the center of the farm nearly one-half mile in 
length, with manholes provided with iron tops with open- 
ings for admission of water and air. Laterals are run 
out from both sides of the main line to the outer bound- 
ary lines of the farm and brought up to the surface of 
the ground close up to the fences and the opening 
screened to keep out trash or animals. 

This method of tile drainage construction enables a 
surplus of water to quickly pass away and affords a per- 



DRAINAGE . 31 

feet system of air passage in dry weather, the advantages 
of which has heretofore been shown. 

In this system of drainage, cement tile were used be- 
cause such tile are more porous than other kinds, and 
water and air readily pass through them. 




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CHAPTER III 

ORGANIC MATTER 

IT is of great importance to crop production that 
there be plenty of organic matter in the soil. 
I have shown why newly cleared soils were so 
rich in fertility — they are rich in organic matter. 

Good authorities say that organic matter in the soil 
absorbs three times as much water as its weight in clay, 
and retains it twice as long, and five times as much as 
sand and retains it five times as long. 

There is no danger of getting too much organic matter 
into the soil. An acre of land twelve inches deep weighs 
2,000 tons. It would take 100 tons of organic matter 
plowed under every two or three years to make one- 
twentieth part of the 2,000 tons. 

For a soil to be in its highest stage of fertility it must 
contain germ life and bacteria. These are always found 
in their greater abundance within the first six inches of 
soil, and they get their food from organic matter. 

As they cannot get any feeding matter from the min- 
erals of the soil, they cannot exist in any soil lacking in 
organic matter. 

In virgin soils they are found in abundance, where 
they reach the highest stage of development. 

This germ life and bacteria in the soil play an impor- 

35 



36 ORGANIC MATTER 

tant part in preparing the soil, or putting it in the proper 
condition for plant growth. 

They aire the little constant workers in Nature's lab- 
oratory, that compound and distribute the substances 
needed for plant food. They cleanse the soil of its of- 
fensive accumulations and are one of the best aids to 
successful agriculture. 

It has been said that land without organic matter is 
but the skeleton of the soil, and that the organic matter 
makes the flesh. 

The system of farming in vogue in the United States 
for the past one hundred years has farmed out of the 
soils most all the organic matter originally in them. It 
has stripped the body of its flesh and nothing but the 
skeleton remains. 

For instance, the average farmer will one year plant a 
field in corn. The next season he will break, rake and 
burn every stalk and put it in corn again. In the fall 
he will sow wheat in the corn. The next season he will 
break the ground and put in wheat again; perhaps he 
will sow clover in the wheat in the spring. If the clover 
is a good stand, the next season he will remove from the 
field not only the first clover crop but also the seed crop, 
and the following spring break up for corn again, and 
continue on and on this same process. 

This is regarded good farming. They tell us it is 
crop rotation, and builds up our farms. Yet I say to 
you, that under this very system our farms have grown 
and are growing poorer every year. That the organic 
matter in the soil is becoming less and less, and why? 



ORGANIC MATTER 37 

Because not sufficient organic matter is being added to 
the soil to keep up the necessary supply. 

The corn stalks were in the majority of cases burned 
and destroyed; the wheat stubble with its roots was in- 
significant. Both crops of clover were removed, leaving 
nothing but stubble and roots, which are insignificant. 

In all these years more organic matter was removed 
than added to the soil, and the supply of humus was 
gradually being exhausted. 

What about the fields that have been planted each 
year to corn for ten, fifteen, twenty and even seventy 
years, and stalks removed and burned each year? And 
what about the many fields rotated with corn, oats and 
wheat only, and the stalks and stubbles in most cases 
burned? 

Vegetable matter destroyed by burning resolves into 
air from 90 to 99 per cent, of its organic parts. 

If this be true, then the value of the ashes obtained 
from burning vegetation is too small to be considered. 

Standing in the receding twilight of an April even- 
ing, I have seen the entire visible horizon of the famous 
Wabash Valley aglow with the reflection from the fires 
of burning corn stalks, raked up into windrows, from 
thousands of acres of soil, that needed the humus, 
potash and nitrogen abounding in these stalks, but 
which was going up in smoke, to be lost forever to 
these acres of soil that are fast losing their fertility. 
As I looked upon this thoughtless and almost criminal 
destruction of soil fertility, I saw in my imagination 
pictured in the reflected light upon the sky, pictures of 



38 ORGANIC MATTER 

" Agricultural Bankruptcy " and " Abandoned Farms," 
and as I beheld this pictured doom of the American 
farm, I exclaimed : When, oh when, will the American 
farmer come into a realization of this awful destruc- 
tion of soil wealth? 

One day in the spring of 1909, while directing some 
work on my farm, I noticed to the north great clouds 
of smoke and flame covering a large area. I wondered 
what could be burning. The conflagration was too 
large for burning corn stalks or buildings. Later in 
the day I learned that a farmer (?) had touched a 
match to a forty-acre field of dry Big English clover 
grown on the ground the previous season and left uncut. 

When I learned of this conscienceless destruction of 
soil fertility, I said in my wrath : The match in the 
hands of the American farmer is a menace to the farm. 

In the growing of this clover and leaving it uncut to 
cover the ground through the leaching season of fall, 
winter and spring, this farmer had taken the first and 
an important lesson in soil restoration. But his second 
and best lesson was left unlearned. 

Think what it would have meant to that soil and that 
farmer had that splendid crop of organic matter, so 
full of the precious soil elements, nitrogen and humus, 
been turned under by the plow. 

Think how the little rootlets of the corn would have 
reveled in this mass of organic matter, mixed with the 
soil and drawing from it into the corn system those 
elements that make that sturdiness of growth that pro- 
duces a heavy paying crop on the farm. 

Again, think of the financial loss to that farmer from 



ORGANIC MATTER 39 

the destruction of the clover. For it has been estimated 
that the potash, phosphoric acid and nitrogen in a ton 
of clover hay is worth $17.57 for manure. There v^ras 
not less than a ton of clover hay on each acre of the 
forty-acre field, worth a total of $702.80 plowed under 
for manure. 

The farmer's only excuse for burning was that the 
clover was so heavy that»it could not be plowed under. 
This we dispute. The right kind of a double-disc plow 
would have turned it under nicely. Of course the plow 
would have occasionally choked up, and it would have 
taken longer to plow the field, but it would have been 
well worth the time and extra labor, for the farmer 
would have secured for this field a fertility that would 
have yielded him large returns. 

The same excuse that this farmer made for burning 
the clover, is made for burning corn stalks; that is, 
they cannot be plowed under so as not to interfere 
with the cultivation of corn and other crops. This we 
also dispute. We have turned under the rankest kind 
of growth of corn stalks that never were pastured, with 
an ordinary walking plow and log chain. Of course, 
some stalks were left sticking out of the ground and 
in the cultivation of crops an occasional hill of corn 
was jerked out of the ground by the cultivator catching 
on the stalks insufficiently plowed under, but what of 
that? The loss of a few hills of corn is nothing com- 
pared to the great loss of the stalks if destroyed by 
burning. 

An instance is given of two farmers owning farms 
side by side, one of whom always gathered up his corn 



40 ORGANIC MATTER 

stalks and burned them. The other never allowed a 
stalk or a straw to be burned on his land. After fifteen 
years the former farmer's farm yielded fifteen bushels 
of corn less to the acre than when he first commenced 
farming it, while the latter's farm produced as well as 
it did at the beginning of the fifteen years. 

One hundred bushels of corn contains about loo 
pounds of nitrogen, 17 pounds of phosphorus and 19 
pounds of potassium. 

The stalks upon which the 100 bushels of corn grew 
contain about 48 pounds of nitrogen, 6 pounds of phos- 
phorus and 52 pounds of potassium. All these ele- 
ments in the stalks have a money value of $11.04. 

These elements in the corn itself are lost to the soil 
if the corn be sold, but that in the stalks can be saved 
to the soil if the stalks are not burned but are plowed 
under. 

In the black prairies of Illinois and Iowa and the 
rich river bottom lands of Indiana, are vast acres of 
land that used to produce an average crop of sixty or 
more bushels of corn to the acre. The average is now 
less than forty bushels to the acre. 

The virgin richness of these lands could have been 
continued simply by the plowing under of the corn 
stalks grown on them. 

The American farmer must learn the lesson of getting 
organic matter into his soil or his farm is doomed. 

We must learn the lesson that the restoration of or- 
ganic matter to the soil is the only way to increase its 
crop-producing power. 

That no soil is complete without it. That the very 



ORGANIC MATTER 41 

nature of organic matter is to bind the soil grains to- 
gether, absorb and hold large quantities of moisture, 
prevent the washing and blowing of the surface, besides 
furnishing the food for bacteria and depositing into 
the soil nitrogen and other needful soil elements. 

When we have well learned this lesson, then will our 
farms be freed from the curse of worn-out soils. 

Nature understood her business when she covered our 
lands with forests and the vast prairies with large grow- 
ing grasses, so that the decay of tree trunks, limbs, 
leaves and grasses would intermingle with the sand and 
the clay and thus produce the rich lands for the farmer, 
but the farmer has not learned the lesson that when he 
gets away from Nature's ways of soil building he is 
heading towards the doom of soil exhaustion. 

We are so apt to do things as our fathers did, forget- 
ting that our fathers lived under different environments 
than we do. 

The pioneer farmer had the soil in its original fresh- 
ness and had no need of building it up. It was rich 
enough. The children were by this pioneer, who was 
not bound by any necessity of a change of farming 
methods, taught the simple lesson of farming just as 
he did. 

But when the land fell into the inheritance of the 
children's children it had almost reached the point of 
soil exhaustion, and the children's children being 
bound with the cords of environment, lacked sufficient 
will or mental power to break them, and kept on farm- 
ing as their fathers did, thus showing the great strength 
and influence of environment. 



42 ORGANIC MATTER 

It is said that in the magic transformation of dirt on 
the farm into dollars no one is robbed. True — if the 
one who touches the soil with the magic wand is not a 
soil robber. But the wand in the hands of a soil robber 
plunders all mankind alike, and as some one has said in 
thought, Mother Earth, resenting the infamy heaped 
upon her and her people, bears the pain in silence but 
inflicts the awful punishment that falls on all alike, by 
withdrawing her bounty. 



CHAPTER IV 

SOIL VENTILATION 

I HAVE said something of soil ventilation and that 
plants cannot thrive without it. I have also said 
that plant roots must breathe or the plant will 
die. 

H soil is so compact that air cannot enter it, the 
plant is injured as much as if it had no water. 

Entirely exclude oxygen from seeds placed in the 
soil and you get no growth. H you have some ventila- 
tion but not enough, then you have the sickly plant. 
It is said that *' a plant lacking in root breathing is 
drowned as effectively as an animal would be under 
water, because enough free oxygen cannot reach them." 
Insufficient ventilation resulting from poor drainage 
destroys organic matter in the soil. 

Sufficient soil ventilation produces the necessary ni- 
trates in the soil and prevents their destruction as well. 

Air must penetrate deeply into the soil, and the pas- 
sage of the air must be both in and out of the soil. 

Soils underlaid with coarse gravel, sandy and light 
soils, are generally strong on ventilation, while compact 
clay and heavy soils are short on ventilation. 

Soil is said to be a living thing. But it is only alive 
when it is full of organic matter and porous veins, so 

45 



46 SOIL VENTILATION 

that it can breathe from the air the gases needed by 
the plant root. 

Tuberculosis enters our insufficiently ventilated homes 
and soil exhaustion enters upon the compact, non-porous 
soils. 

We must ventilate our homes if we live, and this is 
as applicable to the soil as it is to man. 

Soil ventilation can be secured by drainage, deep 
tillage and plowing in, of course, organic matter. Cer- 
tain plants, like the alfalfa plant, penetrate their roots 
deep into the soil and when they decay leave openings 
into which air finds its way. Next to drainage, soil 
ventilation is best secured by the plowing under of heavy 
crops of organic matter, such as corn stalks, rye, vetch, 
buckwheat, hungarian, clover, etc. 

It must not be forgotten that a soil filled with water 
cannot possibly breathe, neither can a close, compact 
soil, so a soil may be fairly well drained and yet not 
be properly ventilated ; hence the need of organic matter 
to aid in soil ventilation. 

The necessity for soil ventilation is not only that 
oxygen may come in contact with the plant roots, but 
that a proper home may be established in the soil for 
the vast multitude of bacteria, so that they can perform 
their work of changing the nitrogen of decaying organic 
matter into a form suitable for plant food. 

It seems that bacteria in the soil are affected by en- 
vironment as well as man, so conditions of the soil will 
influence and modify their growth. 

Soil bacteria being essential to a good, living, work- 
ing soil, then we can see the need of effective soil ventila- 



SOIL VENTILATION 47 

tion so that the soil may be put in that condition that 
these bacteria may best develop and flourish. 

When soil is in such condition it can be truthfully 
said that it is indeed a living thing and is only in the 
proper condition to give its best service in growing 
crops for the farmer. 



CHAPTER V 

PLOWING 

THAT proper plowing is one of the most im- 
portant steps in soil building is apparent on 
close study. 

That soil is improved by stirring is a truth only de- 
nied by the ignorant and unobserving man. It is one 
of Nature's ways of aiding in soil building. The plows 
and cultivators of Nature are the roots of trees and 
plants. 

In the spring and growing seasons of the year, if one 
could see into the soil covered with the forests and vege- 
tation, he would see the roots shooting out and down 
into the soil as animated beings, and as they grow in 
size he would see the soil loosened up by their action, 
and the pushing this way and that way of the roots and 
rootlets stirs the soil more effectively than if stirred by 
the plow. 

This observation of one of Nature's ways shows the 
importance of soil stirring. 

I claim that soil should be stirred frequently. If it 
were possible to break up soils several times a year, 
their fertility would be increased. 

It is one of Nature's ways to be busy. She is never 
idle. Nature will not allow soil to be idle, except in 
the winter season. 

51 



52 PLOWING 

If soil is not occupied with growing crops, then 
Nature starts the weeds and grasses to occupy and 
cover the soil, and from this an important lesson is 
to be learned in successful soil cultivation. Keep your 
soil occupied with some useful crop. It takes as much 
plant food to grow weeds as to grow corn. Then why 
not plow or stir our ground after a crop is removed 
and plant to some crop of fertilizing value, and secure 
the great benefits of weed eradication, soil stirring, or- 
ganic and fertilizing matter. 

It is said that " tillage is a manure," that " frequent 
tillage is our best and cheapest manure," that " tillage 
and manure are one and the same thing." 

Old Rome was once noted for its high state of agri- 
culture, and the old Roman farmer plowed his land 
never less than three, and some times nine times for a 
single crop. And after the dark ages the Flemish 
farmer was a strong believer in frequent pulverization 
of the soil. And upon this principle England has con- 
structed an agriculture that reclaimed her worn-out soil 
and made it increase its productive power nearly four- 
fold. 

Plowing and stirring the soil mixes the organic matter 
with the minerals in the soil, affords better ventilation, 
gives the soil better ability to store up and deliver 
moisture to the growing crops, and gives more room 
for the plant roots to perform their proper functions. 

There is a time to plow and a right and a wrong way 
to plow. 

The plowing or stirring of ground, no matter what 




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PLOWING 55 

its character, when too wet is a crime against Nature's 
laws, and punishment follows, quick and sure. 

The passing of the plow through the soil presses the 
soil grains together until the soil turned over becomes 
dense and impervious to water or plant roots. The soil 
thus turned over becomes like unburnt bricks dried in the 
sun, and ventilation is completely shut off. Its use- 
fulness as a home for plant roots is destroyed. 

And even if the surface soil be sufficiently dry but 
the subsoil too wet, the passing of the plow through 
the soil will press the soil together under the plow and 
we get a compact stratum of earth below the top soil 
which will hold water above it and prevent moisture 
rising when needed. 

All this shows the importance of plowing at the right 
time and with the right kind of plow. 

There has been great evolution in breaking plows ; we 
have many kinds and makes. The writer has tested all 
kinds and is convinced that the disc plow is the best of 
all. 

A disc plow will plow soil that no other plow will. 
It is the only plow that will successfully turn under corn 
stalks and heavy masses of organic matter and thor- 
oughly incorporate it into the soil. 

The furrow slice plowed by a disc plow is broken off 
from the soil below, thus preventing the pressing to- 
gether of the soil grains. 

Any other kind of a plow in passing through the soil 
smooths or slicks the bottom of the furrow slice, and 
the bottom of the furrow, which interferes with soil 
ventilation and the rising of moisture. 



56 PLOWING 

A disc plow does not throw the soil from the bottom 
of the furrow slice on top. It stirs and loosens the soil 
to the depth plowed, completely covering all organic 
matter to be plowed under, yet does not bring the sub- 
soil to the surface; so it is always safe to plow any 
depth possible to be plowed with the disc plow. 

The disc plow pulverizes the soil as it turns it over, 
which no other plow will do, and its draft is lighter. 

When the author began to use double disc plows on 
his farm, using three horses only, and plowing two 
twelve inch furrows an average depth of eight inches, 
the neighboring farmers characteristically condemned 
them at sight, denouncing them as " horse killers." 
And though he continued to use them several years, 
yet these farmers took no pains to investigate their 
merits and continued to condemn. But the author 
knew their merits and paid no attention to the farmers' 
comments, and after using them several years, one spring 
he employed a neighbor negro farmer to plow for a few 
days. The negro came to work at noon with two 
horses expecting to hitch to a walking plow. The 
author gave him one of his horses and directed that 
he hitch it with his two horses to one of his double 
disc plows then standing in a field where it had been 
in use, and also telling him that the plow was properly 
adjusted and all he had to do was to just plow. The 
author then walked off, noticing however, that the negro 
looked as though he wanted to make some objection or 
protest. The author returned in the evening just before 
quitting time and the following conversation took 
place : 



PLOWING 57 

(Author) — " Well Harvey, how have you been getting 
along since I've been gone ? " 

(Negro) — "Fin', sah! Fin', sah! Say, Boss, dey's 
don' bin lyin' 'bout dis plow." 

(Author) — " Why, Harvey, it is strange that any one 
should lie about an innocent looking plow like that, I 
don't see how they could tell anything bad about it." 

(Negro) — "Well, dey's bin lyin' 'bout dis plow and a 
sayin' dat it is a boss killer." 

(Author) — " Well, Harvey, has it killed your 
horses ? " 

(Negro) — "No, sah! It hain't no hoss killer, it don 
run too easy fer dat." 

I have plowed with a disc plow in the fall of the year, 
black gumbo soil so hard that a steel walking plow 
could not be made to enter into it, and I have with a 
disc plow turned under weeds higher than the horses' 
backs so nicely that a single weed could not be seen in 
the field. And with it I once turned under a field of 
hairy vetch, heavy in foliage, after having tried all other 
kinds of plows and failed to make them do the work. 
I once plowed a strip fifty feet in width around a ten- 
acre field and then finished breaking the balance of the 
field with walking plows. The field was planted in 
corn, and during the entire season the corn on the strip 
plowed with the disc plow was more thrifty than the 
rest of the field and at least a foot higher, and produced 
more and better corn. 

How deep shall we plow? Poor Richard said: 

" Plow deep while sluggards sleep. 
And you shall have corn to sell and keep." 



58 PLOWING 

But was Poor Richard exercising the right of poetic 
license, which allows one to measure thought in verse 
although the truth sought to be conveyed be • far 
fetched ? 

In determining the depth to plow, it is well to first 
consider why we plow at all. 

It must be conceded that the object to be secured in 
plowing is to obtain a seed bed most favorable for 
plant growth and development, and such a seed bed is 
one that will hold sufficient moisture, air and heat, so 
that chemical and germ action will take place therein, 
that plant food may be prepared for the growing crops. 

There must be sufficient room for root development. 
And a deep seed bed well filled with organic matter will 
so increase the storage capacity of soils for water, and 
so reduce the effects of evaporation, that a sufficient 
quantity of moisture will be secured to bring the crop 
to maturity, no matter how dry the season may be. 

A shallow seed bed cannot possibly hold sufficient 
organic matter, moisture, air or heat, to meet the needs 
of growing plants. A study of the corn root system 
ought to convince any one that a shallow seed bed does 
not meet the requirements essential to good corn grow- 
ing. A larger space must be given for the roots of 
most any plant. 

If your soil, below the depth to which it has always 
been plowed is close, compact, or hardpan, the roots 
of plants will not penetrate it, nor will they secure suf- 
ficient moisture. The deeper the seed bed the more 
room for plant roots and the greater the supply of plant 
food and moisture. 




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PLOWING 6i 

One enterprising farmer in the Lima Bean belt of 
California, after studying his soil concluded it was a 
mistake to merely scratch the surface as most farmers 
were doing. So he put his plows down twelve inches 
and got under the hard soil underlying the usual plowed 
surface. 

By plowing this depth he gave his beans double depth 
for their roots to grow and get nourishment. This they 
could not have gotten in a shallow seed bed. He 
almost doubled his crop. 

A demonstration of plowing to a depth of twelve to 
fifteen inches in the Yazoo Delta, Louisiana, in 1906, 
without the use of fertilizers, increased the yield of 
corn from fourteen to seventy bushels per acre. 

And numerous demonstrations and experiments of 
deep plowing throughout the South, made within the 
last few years, have led to the conclusion that deep 
plowing supplemented with drainage and plenty of or- 
ganic matter, is the true method of building up and 
maintaining soil fertility. 

In ancient times the Romans plowed to an average 
depth of nine inches. 

The Flemish farmers plowed deep, and the chief 
stone in England's foundation for an improved agricul- 
ture was deep plowing and soil pulverization. 

The Orangeburg fine sandy loams found within the 
Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains from Southeastern 
North Carolina to West Central Texas, are freed to a 
great extent from the danger of erosion by deeper plow- 
ing supplemented with the use of organic matter. 

For years it was the custom to plow these sandy 



62 PLOWING 

loams not over three inches in depth. In later years it 
has been found that by plowing to a depth of eight to 
nine inches that crop yields have been greatly increased. 

One third of the author's " Vetchfalfa Farm " is a 
sandy loam, the subsoil being a yellow sand ranging in 
depth from three to twelve feet with gravel underneath. 

When the author first came into the possession of 
this land he was cautioned to never under any circum- 
stances plow it to exceed four inches in depth or he 
would " kill it." 

The author concluded that there was nothing that 
would pay him so well as to become closely acquainted 
with his own soil. So he got next to this sandy soil 
and studied it. He found that below the plowed depth 
the soil, even though it was pure sand, was so packed 
that air could not enter it and plant roots and moisture 
penetrated it with difficulty. He then concluded that 
there could be no danger in plowing this soil deep so long 
as the yellow sand below was not thrown up on the 
surface by the plow. So in the spring of 1910 he de- 
cided to " kill " the poorest tract of his sandy land and 
ordered the disc plows to be set to plowing as deeply 
as possible, plowing under a heavy crop of organic 
matter. This tract was planted to field corn as late 
as June 3d, yet made seventy-five bushels of corn to 
the acre, which was more than double the crop > that 
had been gathered from this land before the author 
purchased it. 

Rye was sown in this tract in the corn in the fall 
of 1910 and in the spring of 191 1 the corn stalks and 
rye were plowed under and as deep as the disc plows 



PLOWING 65 

would plow it, and the land planted in sweet corn. 
And notwithstanding the fact that the summer of 191 1 
was the driest and hottest experienced for years, this 
corn made a profitable crop and a better crop than the 
best bottom land on " Vetch fal fa Farm." 

By deep plowing, supplemented with the plowing 
under of heavy crops of organic matter the author is 
making his sandy land the best land on his farm. 

Under the direction of the author, experiments of 
deep plowing of stiff clay lands with a disc plow have 
been made for the past three or four years, and aston- 
ishing crop yields have resulted. 

There has recently been invented a disc plow called 
the " Spalding Tilling Machine " which will plow any 
depth up to twenty-four inches and so plows, mixes 
and pulverizes the soil as not to bring any of the soil 
from the bottom of its furrow to the surface, yet will 
completely turn and cover a sufficient depth the heaviest 
mass of organic matter. The author will begin the 
use of these plows the coming season, believing them 
to be the most valuable tool any one can have upon the 
farm. 

In the first edition of this book, in the chapter on 
plowing, the author said, " Drain well your soils, plant 
in them crops for green manures that send their roots 
deep down into the soil, then it will only be necessary 
to plow your soils deep enough to well cover the organic 
matter plowed under." 

This was safe advice and in the use and application 
of which no one could go wrong, but subsequent exten- 
sive experiments have shown the author that not every 



66 PLOWING 

green manuring crop will send their roots much below 
the plowed surface; that the deeper the seed bed, the 
greater its capacity for root growth, holding moisture 
and compounding plant food ; that so long as the proper 
plow is used in plowing no danger can result in deep 
plowing, but rather will your crop yields be materially 
increased. 

Tull, an agricultural writer, claims that by thoroughly 
pulverizing the soil its fertility can be permanently 
maintained; that by repeated plowing he produced 
twelve successive large crops of wheat on the same land 
without manure. 

Supplement Tull's system of frequent plowing and 
pulverizing the soil with deep plowing and the turning 
under of plenty of organic matter and you have the 
secret of building and keeping up the fertility of the 
soil. 



CHAPTER VI 

SOIL COVERING 

TOO much stress cannot be laid upon the im- 
portance of doing that to your soil which will 
keep it covered during the season of fall, 
winter and spring, which is known as the leaching sea- 
son. 

Terrific is the destruction each year to soil by leach- 
ing. Stand by our streams and rivers during their 
floodtides and see the thick consistency of their waters 
made so by the heavy rains that fall upon the soil, mix- 
ing and dissolving its particles of dust and litter. 

Hillsides and valleys are swept of their soil by the 
rapid washing of the waters, which, as stated, occurs 
more frequently in the rainy season. 

Soils covered by, and filled with, close-lying herbage 
and thickly rooted plants will not wash or wear away 
under the action of falling water, neither will such 
covered or root-filled soils be blown away by the winds. 

If an estimate could be made of the soil wealth car- 
ried away each year by the waters falling from the 
clouds and washing away over our fields into our 
streams and rivers to the sea, and by the blowing of 
the winds, it would be appalling. 

The remedy to check and preserve this flow of soil 

69 



70 SOIL COVERING 

wealth to the sea, is keeping our soil, when not occupied 
by growing crops, covered as much as possible with the 
herbage and root-producing plants of rye, vetch, etc. 

Covering the soils with these crops prevents puddling 
of the soil. The growing and decaying of the roots aids 
in depositing the minerals and in bringing about the 
changes characteristic of new soils. 

The open, mellow texture of the soil is produced by 
covering. 

Naked, clayey soils, subjected to excessive rains, fol- 
lowed by drying winds and rapid water evaporation, 
forces them to crack open and their texture is thus in- 
jured. If such soils are covered, they are not subject 
to this process. 

It has been observed that when soil is covered with 
any kind of close material for any length of time, it is 
so enriched that one would think manure had been ap- 
plied to it. Even snow lying on the soil for months en- 
riches it. 

I have already shown that the reason virgin soil was 
so rich was on account of the ages of covering Nature 
gave it. 

In the humid region it is noticeable that, if a fence 
row is neglected, it will first grow weeds, then grass, 
then the different species of trees native to the neighbor- 
hood. That, if after the course of only a few years 
the fence row is cleaned out and again brought into 
cultivation, it will be found that the soil is rich and 
that it will again produce abundantly. 

Some will argue that the reason of this is that the 
land has had a period of rest, forgetting the fact that 



SOIL COVERING 71 

a soil works hardest when it is growing weeds, grasses 
and trees. 

An observer of Nature sees a great lesson in the 
neglected fence row. It demonstrates Nature's way of 
soil covering, soil building and soil restoration. 

When the land occupied by the fence row was no 
longer cultivated and was neglected and for the time 
abandoned by the farmer. Nature took it in hand for 
rebuilding and first prepared it for the growing of 
grass by the growing of different kinds of weeds which 
filled and covered the soil with the decayed roots and 
tops. 

The grass came, whose roots and tops furnished addi- 
tional organic matter and provided a soil covering that 
gathered and retained the nitrates. 

Then the little trees came which stirred the soil with 
their rapidly growing roots. Some of the weeds, 
grasses and trees were of the legume family and so 
stored the precious nitrogen into the soil. 

The roots of the weeds and trees went down deep 
into the soil and brought up potash and other minerals 
which were stored into the leaves, branches and trunks, 
to be transferred to the soil when they fell down on the 
soil and decayed. In this illustration we have all the 
lessons of organic matter, soil stirring, soil covering 
and their importance in restoring worn soil. 

The secret of soil covering in promoting soil fertility 
lies in the fact that covered soil prevents ammonia 
wastes from the soil by evaporation, and the loss of 
nitrogen. 

To preserve soil fertility, it must be kept covered as 



72 SOIL COVERING 

much as possible, yet the system of farming mostly in 
vogue in America is to strip the ground of every ves- 
tige of matter, expose it to the heat of the sun and the 
washing of rains. 

Soil covering is an important lesson we American 
farmers must learn. 

If, after our fields of corn were laid by we would 
sow them in rye or vetch, and when corn is harvested 
roll down the stalks, all to be covered with the snows of 
winter, and no stock allowed to pasture upon them, what 
a wealth of fertility would be gathered under this cov- 
ering during the leaching season. 

What a mass of rich material to be plowed under to 
mix with the fertility produced by the covering during 
the season of rest. 

But how does the average American farmer treat his 
cornfields? They are laid by without any green crop 
planted, the corn is gathered and then his herds of 
cattle and horses turned into them; and the fields are 
stripped of their precious coat of organic matter, the soil 
is ruined by the tramping, puddling and exposure to 
washing rains and baking sun. 

The only exception is when corn is followed by 
wheat, and then too often the fields are pastured to 
their great injury. If a farmer has a stack of straw, 
he will either burn it or sell it, instead of spreading it 
on his soil, which would bring him more money than the 
few dollars he gets for it, and if he burns it he has 
gained nothing. 

I wish I could burn it into every American farmer, 
that he must cover his soil if he would keep up or in- 
crease its fertility. 




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CHAPTER VII 

HOW TO PRODUCE AND GET ORGANIC MATTER INTO THE 

SOIL 

IN the preceding chapters I have endeavored to 
make it clear that worn soil cannot be reclaimed, 
or the fertility of any soil cannot be maintained, 
without the liberal use of organic matter. Any system 
of farming that does not have for its corner stone the 
liberal use of organic matter is a " delusion and a 
snare," and will lead straight to the worn-out abandoned 
soils. 

I have shown that the use of organic matter was 
Nature's way of soil building and so it must be our way 
of soil restoration. 

The use of organic matter being of so much im- 
portance in aiding and securing complete drainage, soil 
ventilation, furnishing food for soil bacteria, and in the 
general building up of all soils, then how are we to pro- 
duce and get organic matter into the soil ? 

Nature has, indeed, done her part in furnishing a 
great multitude of plants that furnish organic matter 
in abundance. Her garden seems to be full of them, 
and it is up to man to do his part and select from this 
great storehouse of wealth the plants that will serve 
him best for this purpose. 

75 



76 PRODUCING ORGANIC MATTER 

While it is conceded by the majority, that manure is 
the best organic matter that can be put into the soil, yet 
we must not forget that the average farm produces 
but a small quantity of manure, not one-tenth part 
enough to keep up its fertility. That the average farmer 
does not have sufficient means to keep sufficient stock 
to furnish the supply of manure needed to rebuild or 
maintain fertility of his farm. 

And we must not forget that worn-out and abandoned 
soils will not produce enough food to feed a sufficient 
number of animals to produce the requisite amount to 
restore their fertility. 

While the author has been a liberal user of manure 
upon his worn soils, yet for years he has felt that 
there is some element lacking in manure that seems to 
be supplied by the use of green manures. Just what 
that element is he does not know, he only knows that 
he gets better results from the plowing under of those 
crops that are best for green manuring than he does 
from the use of ordinary barnyard manure. 

It is said by a high authority that " as an average, 
animals digest and thus destroy two-thirds of the dry 
matter in the food they eat, so that one ton of clover 
hay plowed under will add as much humus to the soil 
as the manure made from three tons of clover hauled 
off and fed, even if all the manure is returned to the 
land without loss of fermentation." 

All the liquids of any value in barnyard manure 
originally came from the plants and grain fed to stock 
and these liquids are the most valuable part of manure. 

In the usual methods of handling manure nearly the 



PRODUCING ORGANIC MATTER 'jy 

whole of this liquid is allowed to go to waste. Does 
not this explain why the author has gotten better re- 
sults from the use of green manure than from the use 
of barnyard manure? In the use of green manures he 
has saved all the valuable liquids which the green 
manuring plants assimilated into their roots and 
branches during their growing season, and has also 
saved two-thirds of the dry matter in these plants and 
thus secured a greater supply of organic matter for 
bacteria food, and supplying humus for the soil. 

But notwithstanding this, the author advises the use 
of all the manure you can get, and do not forget to 
spare the match and plow under for a supply of organic 
matter all cornstalks, weeds, stubble and straw. To 
get a further supply, we must make certain plants sub- 
serve our purpose, and in subsequent chapters the author 
will describe the virtues of some of those plants which 
he thinks are best adapted for producing organic matter. 

However, there are many others of great value, like 
the Canada field-pea, soy bean, cowpea, buckwheat, 
turnip. Dwarf Essex rape, alsike and crimson clover, 
velvet bean, corn sown thick, white mustard, etc. 

Leguminous plants are best for green manuring, be- 
cause of their power to draw vast quantities of nitrogen 
from the air; but there are many non-leguminous plants 
that are valuable for furnishing organic matter and soil 
covering. 

The ideal plant for furnishing organic matter is the 
one that can be planted in the fall of the year, and 
which will make sufficient growth to cover the ground 
during the winter season, and fill the soil for a consider- 



78 PRODUCING ORGANIC MATTER 

able depth with its roots, and if this ideal plant is a 
nitrogen-gathering plant so much the better. 

When organic matter has been produced, that portion 
of it other than the roots of the plants can best be in- 
corporated into the soil by the use of a plow like the 
disc plow or the deep tilling machine. 

It is important that organic matter be put into the soil 
in the right manner to prevent the ill effects of " soil 
roofing " or soil cavities between the bottom of the 
furrow slice and soil turned under. 

But if the plows above mentioned are used and the 
soil is well rolled and worked down with harrow or 
disc there will no effects from " roofing." 




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CHAPTER VIII 

RYE 

EXAMINE the rye plant and its roots in the 
early spring and you will find the soil com- 
pletely covered with the foliage of the plant, 
and the soil for six or more inches in depth a perfect 
mass of roots. Plowing rye is like plowing grass sod. 

The rye plant covering the soil during the winter 
season prevents the disastrous leaching that occurs on 
soils not covered. The foliage and roots give organic 
matter and ventilation to the soil. 

It is said on the best authority that green rye is equal, 
ton for ton, to stable manure, with one small exception. 
Manure has half a pound of phosphoric acid per ton 
more than rye. 

In a ton of green rye there are eleven pounds of 
nitrogen, four and one-half pounds of phosphoric acid 
and twelve and one-half pounds of potash. A ton of 
green clover contains only twelve pounds of nitrogen. 

Rye sown early in the fall will by May i produce 
five to fifteen tons of rye to the acre. This plowed 
under on that date would give you, compared to manure, 
a money value of $io to $20 per acre procured at an 
expense of less than $2 per acre. In addition to its 
manuring value, it can be grown at the time of the year 
when much of your soil is not occupied with other crops. 

81 



82 RYE 

It is a protection to fields liable to washing. It ab- 
sorbs certain useful minerals and acids that otherwise 
would be lost to the soil. 

One writer, speaking of rye, says : " The labor of 
applying evenly forty loads of manure per acre is con- 
siderable. All this is done more evenly by the green 
crop. Seed and labor together cost me but three dollars 
and a half per acre. I cannot say that it adds as much 
fertility to the soil as forty loads of manure, but I do 
say that in our droughty seasons it produces as great 
an increase of crop as do forty two-horse loads of good 
manure. It certainly pays to practice it, and to practice 
it largely, even on the land well supplied with stable 
manure." 

In the fall of 1907 I planted rye in corn. The fall 
was the dryest we had had for years, but notwithstand- 
ing the extreme drought the rye made a splendid 
growth before winter and covered the ground. Some 
of the rye was plowed under quite early in the spring, 
and some on high rolling ground was not plowed under 
until it was heading. The entire field was planted to 
sweet corn. In breaking the field the soil broke and 
turned over as a sod field would. The soil was loose 
and friable, and a splendid crop of sweet corn was 
grown. The corn grown on the higher and rolling por- 
tion of the ground and which was plowed when the rye 
was in head produced more per acre than the remainder 
of the field, and yet this portion of the field was the 
poorest. 

I had another ten-acre field, which I also planted to 
rye in the fall of 1907. This field was subject to much 



RYE 83 

washing, but the rye covered the ground so completely 
before winter that no portion of the field was washed. 
In the spring I early plowed this field and sowed it in 
peas for a canning factory. The peas were harvested 
July 7th, 8th, and 9th. After the removal of the peas 
I disced the field and July 15th sowed to hungarian. 
September 6th I began cutting the hungarian for hay. 
It produced three and one-half tons of splendid hay per 
acre, equal in feeding value to any hay, except alfalfa, 
grown on the farm. 

On the 20th of September with a disc wheat drill I 
sowed the field to rye without any preparation of the 
soil. By December ist the field was a solid mass of 
green rye. This field I broke early the following spring 
and planted to field corn, and the field was in splendid 
tilth for same, and made eighty bushels of corn per 
acre. 

In growing rye for fertilizing purposes most farmers 
make the mistake of pasturing it too close in both fall 
and spring. In no case should it be pastured in the 
spring. Allow it to grow as long as you can. You 
cannot have too large a growth to plow under. Some 
may tell you that if you allow it to get too large and 
plow it under it will so dry out the soil as to injure 
the growing crop. But do not believe it. Heavy vege- 
tation plowed under is a conservator of moisture. 

Some will also tell you that it sours the soil. Your 
soil is sour only when it is cold, wet, non-ventilated and 
unproductive. Ditch and get the water out of it, plow 
into it large quantities of vegetable matter, produced 
from green manuring plants, and thus start up the 



84 RYE 

circulation of air into it, and it becomes warm and 
sweet. 

Soil is never soured by plowing under green crops if 
it is well drained, and is thoroughly rolled and pulver- 
ized. 

Next to draining and ventilating, sour soil needs 
feeding organic matter, A fertile soil is never sour. 

While rye is one of the most valuable of forage 
plants, yet it is equally as valuable for fertilizing pur- 
poses. If your soil needs cleaning, sow rye. It gathers 
food in the soil and makes fine growth on poor soils. 
It is especially adapted to sandy lands and will grow 
well on stiff clay lands if they are well drained. 

The author knows of a farm that has been restored 
and built up with rye until it produces the best corn 
crops of any farm in the neighborhood. The owner 
always sows rye for plowing under for his corn crop. 
His rye crops plowed under helped his land in holding 
moisture in dry seasons, which, as I stated, is contrary 
to general belief. 

The farmers have a wonderful weapon in rye to aid 
in combating soil exhaustion, and it is so easily and 
cheaply grown. From one to two bushels of seed at 
a cost of from 70 cents to $1 per bushel will seed an 
acre, and the labor and cost of seeding in corn or after 
wheat is insignificant. 

We who are sentimentally inclined delight in the melo- 
dies of the Scottish love lyric, " Comin' Thro' the Rye," 
humming its words: 

"If a body meet a body, comin' thro' the rye, 
If a body kiss a body, need a body cry? " 



RYE 85 

We wonder whether the Scottish bard was singing 
of the rye plant or of the River Rye and its stepping- 
stones o'er which the Scottish maidens were wont to 
pass, for if he was singing of the rye plant we can pic- 
ture in our imagination the lovely scene of a field, rich 
in the beautiful growth of the majestic, blooming rye 
plant, whose foliage hid the blushes of the Scottish 
maiden when met by her stalwart lover, " Comin' Thro' 
the Rye," who claimed the coveted kiss. 

But we who have no sentiment in our hearts and 
look only to the material worth of things, can find in the 
rye plant those elements of plant food that quickly and 
cheaply build up our soils to the highest and best fer- 
tility. 

We so little appreciate the good things that God has 
provided for our welfare, and rye is one of the least 
appreciated crops on the farm. Aside from its great 
feeding value, it is one of the best soil builders, and is 
always so available and so willing to respond and give 
its best service to us under the varied conditions of soil, 
weather and seasons. 




A BUNCH OF VETCH TAKEN FROM UNDER ICE AND 
WATER. 

This vetch was covered with ice and water for three weeks in 
the month of January, yet the plants were bright and green and 
showed no injury. This vetch was taken from the field shown in 
the illustration of a field of vetch in full bloom. 



CHAPTER IX 

HUNGARIAN 

HUNGARIAN is another one of the most val- 
uable and less appreciated crops of the farm. 
For feeding purposes, for both cattle and 
horses, I rank it above clover or timothy hay. It is 
said to injure horses. A greater fallacy never existed. 
Cut just when the seed has formed, no injury results 
from feeding in any quantity. I have fed it for years 
to the best of horses, and they relished it and thrived upon 
it. It is the quickest and cheapest hay crop grown. It 
can be sown in July after a wheat, oats or pea crop 
has been removed, and in eight weeks or less a crop of 
hay can be gathered making from two to four tons to 
the acre, and after the removal of a crop of hungarian the 
land can be seeded to rye or wheat. 

I have heard it said that it is a soil robber. I have 
not found it so. 

A ton of hungarian extracts from the soil but eight 
pounds of nitrogen and eight pounds of potash more 
than a ton of green clover extracts from the soil. 

For loosening up the soil nothing equals it. 

In the summer of 1909 I had a field in corn, one-half 
of which the previous season had been in hungarian 
for hay, and there was no difference in the yield of corn, 

89 



90 HUNGARIAN 

but that part of the field previously in hungarian was 
more easily cultivated. 

Farmers will condemn hungarian without foundation, 
and say that it is a robber of the soil, and yet raise year 
after year timothy, which I say and can prove is the 
meanest soil robber on the American farm. Mean, be- 
cause I know of no more certain way to hasten the total 
exhaustion of the soil than to grow timothy year after 
year. On my farm I shun it as I would a rattlesnake. 
It takes six years of the best of treatment to rebuild 
soil upon which timothy has been grown for three or 
four years. 

I know of fields, once rich, almost utterly made unfit 
for the growing of crops by the growing of timothy on 
them for a great number of years. 

If I was forced to buy hay, I would rather pay $20 
per ton for timothy hay than grow it on my farm. But 
I have digressed, I was to say something of the value 
of hungarian as a producer of organic matter. 

It is said that a ton of hungarian in blossom contains 
twenty pounds of nitrogen, five and one-half pounds of 
phosphoric acid and seventeen pounds of potash. 

It takes from one to one and one-half bushels of seed 
to sow an acre, worth generally from $1.50 per bushel, 
or $1.50 to $2.25 per acre. If but three tons of hun- 
garian to the acre is grown and same is plowed under, 
you get 60 pounds of nitrogen to the acre. It will 
take six tons of barnyard manure to produce 60 pounds 
of nitrogen, and six tons of manure is worth not less 
than $1.50 per ton, or $9. 

In addition to the large amount of nitrogen and potash 



HUNGARIAN 91 

in a ton of Hungarian, think of the vast quantities of 
organic matter to plow under and available as humus, 
and for loosening up the soil and for soil ventilation. 

If Hungarian is used as a plowing-under crop, I would 
advise sowing it after the wheat or oats crop is gath- 
ered, discing or plowing the ground deep, then when 
Hungarian is in blossom and before the seed has ma- 
tured, plow under five or six inches deep and sow to 
rye. You then Have the advantage of from two or 
three plowings of the soil during a season, which I 
Have shown to be a manuring in itself, as " tillage is a 
manure." Your soil is also covered during the leach- 
ing season, and has in the spring another valuable crop 
for plowing under. 

By a little hustling a crop of Hungarian could be sown 
after wheat, plowed under in time to sow wheat in the 
fall and which would be of immense value to the wheat 
crop. 



CHAPTER X 

SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 

IN 1906 the author purchased a farm that had the 
reputation of being one of the poorest in the county. 
It had been kicked and buffeted about as trading 
stock. Each owner no sooner got into possession of it 
when he found he had purchased a " gold brick," and 
never rested until he succeeded in unloading it upon 
some other victim. It never seemed to occur to any of 
its owners that the farm had simply been handled by 
soil robbers and was paying the penalty by withdrawing 
its bounty. 

The author purchased this farm because of its cheap- 
ness, location and possibilities, and was given the laugh 
for so doing. 

The character of the soil and lay of the land is pe- 
culiar. One-third consists of deep yellow sand, placed 
in ridges, no portion of any extent being level. One- 
third is level, sandy loam and the other third black Wa- 
bash bottom land. 

The entire farm in its early history was covered with 
large walnut, poplar, oak and other timber, the timber 
on the sandy land having been as heavy as on the other 
portion of the farm. The land was a portion of an 
Indian reserve, set apart by the government to the In- 

95 



96 SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 

dians in 1818 and by the Indians sold in 1833, and was 
cleared more than sixty years ago, and for many years 
produced large crops. It had always been farmed upon 
the principle of getting out of it all you can each year 
and putting nothing back into the soil. Under this sys- 
tem of farming the sandy or two-thirds portion of the 
farm had become so poor that in the best season it pro- 
duced but 15 to 20 bushels of corn, 5 to 10 bushels of 
oats and 10 bushels of wheat to the acre. Some sea- 
sons corn, oats and wheat were an entire failure. Even 
the black bottom portion was farmed in corn year after 
year until the yield fell to less than 40 bushels to the 
acre. In fine, the farm was just on the borderland of 
the abandoned farm. 

As the author has been up against many of the hard 
propositions of life, it did not take him long to learn 
that in acquiring this farm he had tackled more than he 
had anticipated. He was like the Indian who was being 
worsted in a hand-to-hand conflict and who exclaimed, 
" Me in a heap big fight." 

To reclaim this land, the author soon realized, would 
require some work and study. 

The first season he planted the sandy portion to early 
peas for canning purposes. Seven weeks of dry weather 
reduced the crop to a money value of $10 per acre. 
Upon the removal of the peas the land was disced and 
planted in sweet corn before June 25. The sweet corn 
brought a money value of $15 per acre. 

Various crops were grown on the farm the first sea- 
son, to-wit : Peas, sugar corn, canning beets, field corn, 
tomatoes and potatoes. Some commercial fertilizer and 



SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 97 

manure was used; the commercial fertilizer with little 
or no success. 

Had it not been for twenty acres of late peas sown 
on the bottom lands that brought a money value of $75 
per acre, the farm the first year would not have paid ex- 
penses. 

But the author was not discouraged. He was con- 
stantly studying conditions and looking about for some- 
thing and some method by which the soil of his farm 
could be rebuilt. 

One day during the first summer he received through 
the mail a catalogue of a seed house, and in turning its 
pages his eyes caught the words " Sandy Vetch." The 
fact that he owned some sand that was then the upper- 
most subject in his mind no doubt had something to do 
with arresting his eyes upon the words. 

Reading the description in the catalogue of this plant, 
which said that " Sand Vetch was becoming more popu- 
lar with the farmers of the country as they learned more 
of its value ; that it was noted for its extreme hardi- 
ness, its value as a cover crop and for forage and fer- 
tilizing purposes ; that it was especially recommended 
for poor soils where it thrives wonderfully and improves 
the soil, being rich in nitrogen," the author began to 
" sit up and take notice." 

It did not take him long to learn that he was inter- 
ested and intensely interested. But when he read fur- 
ther that " the Washington Department of Agriculture 
estimated the value of an acre of vetch plowed under 
as equivalent to putting into the ground twenty or forty 
dollars' worth of commercial fertilizer," he became en- 



98 SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 

thusiastic. He was ready to shout at the top of his 
voice " Eureka ! " But he read on until he came to 
where the description said : " It is suited to any soil, 
and is valuable in this respect, as it produces good crops 
on poor sandy soils, while on good land it grows to a 
height of four or five feet and produces enormous 
crops." 

This was enough. He was convinced that he had 
been rewarded in his search, and had indeed found the 
precious alchemic soil-enriching art for which he had 
been searching, and immediately sat down with " pen 
in hand " and ordered seed enough to sow two acres. 
Yes, two whole acres! 

And now, in the light of six years' experience with 
this valuable plant, the author smiles when he thinks 
that, being up against one of the hardest propositions 
of his life, and having placed in his hands the very thing 
that would overcome it, he only had nerve enough to 
order enough vetch seed to plant two acres, for had he 
possessed the nerve to have ordered enough to plant 
his entire farm, and then the following spring planted 
the same in field corn, as subsequent experience demon- 
strated, he would have received from the corn crop al- 
most the purchase price of the farm. 

In due time the seed was received, and in August it 
was planted upon the poorest and most rolling two acres 
of sand land on the farm. It grew rapidly, and by 
winter the ground was so completely covered with its 
foliage that washing of the land was entirely prevented. 
An examination of the roots showed them set thick with 
nitrogen noftules. Early in the spring, before any other 



SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 99 

kinds of grass or vegetation began to grow, the vetch 
plants were pushing out their summer foliage, and by- 
May I they were four feet in length. About the first 
of June the two acres were cut for hay. 

The author saw clearly that he had found a valuable 
plant for the farm, yet exemplified usual caution by 
planting only 25 acres of vetch in August of 1907, the 
sowing being on the poorest and sandiest land of the 
farm, 21 acres in one field and four in another. It was 
decided to seed the 21 acres to field corn and leave the 
other for pasture. Both grew luxuriantly. 

The spring of 1908 was very wet, and it was May i 
before the ground was in condition to break for corn. 
Delays were such that the 21 -acre field was not entirely 
broken until May 25. The vetch had grown to a height 
of five feet, and the mass of vegetation was so heavy 
that it was almost impossible to turn under. A half 
dozen makes of plows were tried with complete failure, 
when finally success was obtained with a double disc 
plow, and the field was finished. The prospect did not 
look inviting, for bunches of vetch showed here and there 
sticking out of the ground. The field was worked down 
to fairly good condition for planting by dragging and 
rolling, and on June 3 and 4 was planted to yellow 
corn. 

Dire v/ere the predictions made as to the outcome. 
Many contended that the heavy mass of vegetation 
would absorb all the moisture from the ground and the 
corn would perish. And it cannot be said that the au- 
thor was fairly hopeful. But he gritted his teeth, held 
his counsel and awaited results. The corn 'tame up a 



loo SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 

splendid stand. Dry weather set in, which added no 
little discomfort to the situation. The corn grew slowly, 
and as soon as it was sufficiently large the cultivators 
were set to work, and were worked with a little diffi- 
culty on account of bunches of vetch insufficiently 
plowed under catching on the cultivator points. 

It was amusing to hear the side remarks of the men 
working the cultivators, which would indirectly come 
to the author's ears. 

One day, when the corn was receiving its first plow- 
ing, two hardware men from the city came out to set 
up and start working a new two-row cultivator. When 
they were taken to this field disgust was plainly shown 
upon their countenances. One of them, after the corn 
grown in this field had been harvested, told the author 
that when he first looked upon the field he said to him- 
self that in all his forty years' experience as a farmer 
and seller of agricultural tools he had never seen so un- 
promising a prospect for corn as this field presented. 

As stated, the weather was dry, and the corn grew 
five or six inches high, and made no further growth for 
more than a week, when it seemed to take on new life, 
and then how it did grow! My, the pride the author 
did take in that field of growing corn ! How it sparkled 
his eyes and swelled his pride to look upon it! He felt 
the glory of having done something worth while. The 
neighbors and travelers along the highway began to take 
notice as the corn grew and grew like Jack's famous 
bean stalk. 

The corn, notwithstanding the rolling and hilly char- 
acter of the field, was of the same height, every hill 




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SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 103 

alike, and of the dark green color indicating the healthy 
growth of corn. 

When the corn reached waist height the prophets who 
had predicted its untimely demise on account of the 
great mass of vetch turned under said : " Wait until 
it begins to ear, and then you will see it fire and wither 
up." 

But the corn grew up and up until it reached the 
height of eight to ten feet, silked, tasseled, and bore its 
ears of golden corn. 

It was subject to six weeks of dry weather after it 
had silked, and yet it had not fired and every hill was 
bright and green. The neighbor's corn opposite and 
across the public highway fired clear above the ears of 
corn, and did not make 20 bushels to the acre. 

Residents of the county not acquainted with what 
had been done to the field, who had been passing this 
field for twenty years or more, attracted by the remarkable 
growth and condition of the corn, would stop, get out 
of their vehicles and go over into the field to examine 
it, and then stop at the house and inquire what had been 
done to the soil to cause such a growth of corn, saying 
that " they had never known this field to have upon it 
a crop of corn of any value ; that corn on this field was 
almost invariably a failure." 

The corn finally reached its harvesting stage, sound 
and solid. It was gathered, hauled to market, and made 
by weight 72 bushels to the acre, and brought a money 
value ot $35 per acre. 

The planter used to plant the corn was set to drop 
three grains to the hill, and never missed putting three 



104 SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 

grains in the hill, but too often dropped four grains, 
which made the corn too thick, and this condition fully 
reduced the yield ten or more bushels to the acre. But 
think of 72 bushels of corn being grown on land that 
had not for twenty or more years produced more than 
20 bushels to the acre, and this feat accomplished in so 
short a time and with so little expense, as the cost of the 
seed was but $3.50 per acre. 

This experiment with vetch made the author a vetch 
enthusiast. 

In August of the year 1908 he planted thirty acres, 
and notwithstanding the extreme dry fall, there having 
been no rain for eight weeks after it was sown, it grew 
nicely. 

In the spring ten acres of it was plowed for field 
corn, seven or eight acres for potatoes, and the balance 
for sweet corn. 

The illustration in the front of this book shows a 
view of the poorest part of the field of corn taken Sep- 
tember 7, 1909. 

Upon this particular spot of ground shown in the picture 
corn had never grown to exceed a height of four or 
five feet, with a correspondingly poor yield. Here the 
vetch was the heaviest, being four or five feet in height 
when plowed under in the middle of May. The soil on 
this particular spot is a sandy clay, the remainder of 
the field is a black gumbo soil ; the whole having been 
farmed for a half century with a rotation of corn, oats 
and wheat, a greater majority of the years in corn, and 
every year the stalks were burned. In recent years the 
yield of corn had been from almost a failure to 40 bush- 



SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 105 

els to the acre. The yield after the vetch was nearly 
90 bushels to the acre of large, splendid white corn — 
an increase over former years of over 100 per cent. 
The cost of vetch seed for this field was $3 per acre. 

The author's brother is the owner of a farm the soil 
of which is clay underlaid with a gravelly subsoil. 
When first cleared, more than sixty years ago, it was 
rich and produced enormous crops. Fifty years in the 
hands of tenants, with an insufficient soil-building ma- 
terial added to it, reduced the yield of corn to less than 
30 bushels to the acre. In the fall of 1908 fifty acres 
of this land was planted to vetch. The extreme dry 
fall made the seed come up slow and uneven, and only a 
fair growth was obtained before winter. At plowing 
time the following spring a fair crop of vetch was 
plowed under and forty acres planted to field corn. The 
crop gathered from the field corn produced over 70 
bushels of corn to the acre — an increase of over 100 
per cent. 

Ten acres were plowed under and the ground culti- 
vated until June, when it was planted to alfalfa, about 
which we will speak later. Another vetch enthusiast 
was added to the list. 

Both author and brother had (December 20th, 1909) 
vetch growing on their farms, sowed in the open and in 
corn, that covers the ground like a thick velvet carpet. 

The author's experience with vetch for potatoes and 
sweet corn has been as successful as it has been with 
field corn. Sweet corn has been grown after vetch on 
poor soil that produced from 4.^2 to 5 tons to the acre 
— a money value of $36 to $40 per acre. In 1909 one 



io6 SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 

and two-fifths acres of potatoes planted after vetch on 
soil deficient in fertility produced nearly 450 bushels, 
and potatoes planted after vetch on some of the sandiest 
land on his farm produced at the rate of 150 bushels 
to the acre, and double the amount of potatoes grown 
side by side on the same soil after crimson clover plowed 
under. 

No doubt the question suggested to the reader's mind 
is : Why is vetch of so much value as a soil or fertilizer 
crop ? The question may be answered with a few words. 
It is the greatest nitrogen-gathering and humus-produc- 
ing plant found in Nature's garden. 

We believe it to be true as holy writ that for every 
disease of the human body Nature has a remedy if man 
can only find it, and that for every disease of the soil 
there is a remedy to be found in the plant, mineral or 
animal kingdom, and it is up to man to find and ap- 
ply it. 

If soil was originally built up by mixing vegetable 
matter with disintegrated minerals and stones, then why 
can it not be kept built up by the same process ? 

Under Southern European skies vetch is supposed to 
have had its birth. In all Europe it is cultivated for 
forage purposes, it being regarded equal to clover in 
nutritive qualities. Sown in late summer or early au- 
tumn, it is harvested the next year. If in the spring, 
it is cut the same year. 

The American farmer, slow or overly cautious in 
trying the unknown, has rarely cultivated it. As stated, 
it is an annual plant, and must be seeded each year, al- 
though it readily reseeds itself, as I have pastured it 



SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 107 

with cattle, taking the cattle from it as it began to seed, 
and then allowed the seed to ripen and fall upon the 
ground, discing the field thoroughly, and the seed came 
up, giving me a fine stand. 

Vetch being rarely cultivated in America, the supply 
of seed is, as a consequence, procured in Europe and im- 
ported to this country at a cost to the farmer of 6^ 
to 10 cents per pound f. o. b. shipping station. 

Fifty pounds of seed to the acre is the right quantity 
to plant. 

In corn I sow the seed with a one-horse hoe or disc 
wheat drill. In the open I sow with a two-horse drill. 
The feed gauge of the average one or two-horse drill 
entirely shut ofif sows just 50 pounds to the acre. 

If vetch is sown for seed, there must be sowed with it 
about one peck of rye to the acre. The rye holds up 
the vetch so it can be easily harvested. The plant is 
a trailing one, and hence is hard to harvest unless it has 
a plant sown with it to support it. 

When seed is ripe, cut and thresh with ordinary 
threshing machine and separate seed with fanning mill. 

Seed for planting can be procured from most any 
seed house. 

The vetch plant has a mass of roots penetrating the 
soil to a considerable depth. The roots are always full 
of nodules, the homes of the bacteria that obtain their 
food from the nitrogen of the air, and which it is claimed 
collect more nitrogen than they need, which surplus is 
stored into the soil. 

The clover, alfalfa and pea plants and other plants 
of the legume family are considered valuable to the soil 



io8 SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 

because of their nitrogen-gathering powers, they hav- 
ing these nodules on their roots; but a vetch plant will 
have ten nodules on its roots where these other plants 
have one. 

The vetch roots are so numerous in the soil that it 
will plow up like heavy sod. The foliage of the plant 
is so massive that it produces from twelve to twenty 
tons to the acre. There is no plant of the nitrogen- 
gathering species that produces such a quantity of or- 
ganic matter for plowing under as is furnished by the 
vetch plant. 

When plowing up the 21 -acre field mentioned in the 
beginning of this chapter the next spring after the large 
corn crop had been grown, the author observed that the 
corn roots had pushed their way down into the mass 
of vetch plowed under, and had interlaced themselves 
around the vetch stems until the whole mass had been 
knitted together, and, the plow turning It on top of the 
furrow, it looked like sheep skins spread out on the 
ground. On exposure to the air the mass fell Into small 
pieces. 

This observation proved to the author that the corn 
roots had found in this mass of vegetable matter a great 
feeding ground, where both feed and moisture were 
found in abundance for the feeding of the corn plants. 

After six years' experience with it I am convinced 
that the claim of the Agricultural Department, that an 
acre of it plowed under is equivalent in value to twenty 
to forty dollars, is not extravagant. 

It is the greatest soil builder ever discovered, alfalfa 
not excepted. With it and ditching I can reclaim any 



SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 109 

poor or worn-out soil. With it the American farmer 
can make his soil produce as it has never produced since 
it was rescued from the wilderness. 

Vetch is the remedy for clover-sick soil. If alfalfa 
is the most valuable forage plant ever discovered, vetch 
is the most valuable fertilizing plant ever discovered. 

Vetch builds on its roots so many pretty little homes 
for the busy nitrogen-gatherers, who so mysteriously 
draw from the great storehouse of nitrogen situated in 
the air above the soil great quantities of the precious, 
most valuable acquisition to the soil, nitrogen. 

Vetch is no respecter of soils. It settles down and 
makes its home with the rich or poor clay as well as the 
rich or poor sand, and commences its business of soil 
restoration at once. It has no terrors of frost or 
drought. Winter will grasp it with its hand and hold 
it in its icy clasp for months and months, and when the 
warm sunshine of spring releases it, it smiles with its 
freshness of green and continues doing business at the 
old stand. The drought of fall, spring or summer will 
blow its oven breath upon it, but it heeds it not, and 
continues its business of storing fertility in the soil as 
though it was being constantly caressed with refreshing 
showers. 

It finds the soil sick, impoverished and dying. It 
touches it with its restoring power, and under its stimu- 
lating touch the soil awakens with new and renewed 
life, pouring out its wealth of plant growth that ripens 
into food for beast and man. 

It will yet enter upon the abandoned farm, banish the 
desolation of the fields, fill the unoccupied farmhouse 



no SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 

and barns with the songs of happy, prosperous parents, 
the laughter of children and the riches of fertile fields. 
All hail King Vetch, Nature's greatest soil restorer! 




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CHAPTER XI 

ALFALFA 

THE value of alfalfa on the farm cannot be esti- 
mated. No plant has so many uses. If the 
corn plant should become extinct, alfalfa could 
take its place, fill every want that corn supplies, and 
yet its storehouse of utility would still be overstocked. 

Considering the great usefulness of this plant, it is 
astonishing that the American farmer grows so little of 
it. It cannot be on account of ignorance, for volumes 
have been written about it by the great alfalfa experts, 
Coburn, Clothier and Wing, the public press and agri- 
cultural papers, and for years lectures upon its value 
have been given to Farmers' Institutes all over the coun- 
try. 

The slowness of the farmer in growing alfalfa is no 
doubt due to environment, or his habit of farming " just 
as father did." In many instances it is due to downright 
laziness, or that spirit of lethargy or state of indifference 
that has gotten its hold on so many farmers, and which 
is responsible for our worn-out soils. 

The average farmer does not seem to be in the pos- 
session of the spirit possessed by the modern manufac- 
turer who does not hesitate to adopt any improvement 
or buy any improved machinery that will increase the 
efficiency of his plant. 

113 



114 ALFALFA 

There is no plant on the farm that is so profitable 
to the farmer as alfalfa. When the Kansas farmer com- 
menced to grow it he began to wax fat. His bank, ac- 
count grew, his mortgage was canceled, his house and 
barn grew into stately buildings filled with those equip- 
ments and machinery that lessen toil, and make life 
worth while. 

If this plant has done so much for the Kansas farmer, 
why can it not do as much for the farmers of every 
state in the Union? 

Alfalfa on the farm in most any state means at least 
three crops of hay each season whose feeding power has 
no equal. 

It means plenty of pasture for all stock no matter 
how dry the season may be. 

It means a food in abundance for the hog, greater in 
fattening and health preserving powers than any food 
ever grown and fed to this animal. 

It means better milk, butter, beaf, mutton and poultry. 

It means that this busy plant, which never rests, will 
send its great long nodule-producing roots down deep 
into the soil, opening the way for the water and air, pro- 
ducing organic matter, liberating and bringing up the 
valuable plant minerals, drawing from the air into the 
soil the precious nitrogen, and thus rebuilding and mak- 
ing rich again the soils wasted of their fertility by the 
sordid system of farming so long practiced in this land 
of ours. 

Some farmers say that the reason they do not grow 
alfalfa is because it is hard to get it started; that it re- 
quires so much labor and patience to get the proper 



ALFALFA 115 

stand and start that they can not afford to bother with 
it. 

The author has found that it is easier to get a stand 
of and grow alfalfa than it is to get a stand of and grow 
clover. He has also found that the first requisite to 
successful alfalfa growing is a well drained soil. Al- 
falfa can not grow with " wet feet." 

In the growing of alfalfa the author has pursued the 
following methods with great success : 

When he decided upon the location of his alfalfa field 
(and in selecting the field he paid no attention to charac- 
ter of soil, but selected the field with reference to easy 
access to barn and stock), he plowed the land deep in 
the spring and planted to either field or sugar corn. 
After the corn was laid by he sowed the field to sand 
or hairy vetch at the rate of thirty-five pounds to the 
acre, and thereafter kept all stock off of same. The 
following season the vetch is allowed to grow until it 
has bloomed, then the vetch and corn stalks are plowed 
under as deeply as possible and the soil thoroughly rolled 
and dragged. This plowing is generally done in July, 
and the field is not only rolled and dragged several 
times, but is harrowed quite a number of times until the 
soil is in an excellent state of pulverization. 

If manure is available a thin coating is spread with a 
manure spreader, the spreading being done after plow- 
ing and the manure being worked into the soil with the 
harrow. The spreading of a thin coating of manure 
upon alfalfa ground after it is plowed will insure a stand 
of alfalfa. And the plowing under of vetch without 
manure will also insure a stand of alfalfa. 



ii6 ALFALFA 

The seed at the rate of twenty pounds to the acre is 
sown either with a hand seeder or a seeder attached to 
the front part of a disc drill. The seed must be well 
covered or it will not grow. The author wishes to im- 
press upon the reader the importance of getting the 
seed deep enough into the ground, or well covered, as 
he has noticed that where the seed was covered the best 
that the stand of alfalfa was the best. The author is 
firmly of the belief that the majority of failures in se- 
curing a stand of either clover or alfalfa are occasioned 
by failure in getting seed covered a sufficient depth. 

The best time to sow alfalfa seed is from the first to 
the middle of August. The plant will reach a height 
of seven or eight inches in six weeks. At this stage 
many claim it should be clipped with a mower. The 
author has practiced the clipping of baby alfalfa and 
has also allowed it to grow without clipping and was 
unable to see any difference in either method; but after 
the first season alfalfa must be mowed at the proper 
stage, which is when new shoots begin to push out from 
the plant near the ground, or it loses its vigor. 

Authorities on alfalfa tell us that the alfalfa plant 
when first started must get its nitrogen, which is neces- 
sary to its life, from the soil ; that after the plant is well 
established it draws its supply of nitrogen from the air; 
that for this reason you must have your soil inoculated 
with nitrogen-gathering bacteria, and have plenty of 
nitrogen in the soil or you cannot get the alfalfa plant 
to establish itself. Then, if this is true, some method 
must be used to secure the supply of nitrogen and nitro- 
gen-gathering bacteria in the soil intended for the alfalfa 



ALFALFA 117 

field. Various methods of doing this are given by al- 
falfa experts, such as soil inoculation by taking soil 
from alfalfa fields and spreading upon the field before 
sowing the seed, heavy manuring, sowing alfalfa meal 
with the seed, and feeding alfalfa hay to stock a year 
before alfalfa is planted and using the manure on the 
field. 

The author has never been impressed with the inocu- 
lating method of securing soil from an alfalfa field and 
spreading upon the field intended to be sown. Upon 
that proposition he is " from Missouri and will have to 
be shown," but he has been shown that manure will in- 
oculate for alfalfa. He has spread manure and sown 
alfalfa seed upon a dead furrow where the soil was so 
poor that no plant would grow upon it and secured a 
stand that for vigor of growth exceeded that grown upon 
good ground. 

His experience has also taught him that where you 
can not procure manure, vetch will inoculate the soil and 
make alfalfa grow vigorously. 

The author in his chapter on vetch spoke of ten acres 
of alfalfa planted in June, 1909, upon clay land owned 
by his brother. This field has been cleared for more 
than sixty years and has been farmed until it was worn- 
out. As stated, it was planted to vetch in August, 1908, 
and plowed under in May, 1909, before it had ripened its 
seed. The weeds were kept down by frequent cultiva- 
tion until the middle of June, when alfalfa seed was 
sown at the rate of twenty pounds to the acre. In four 
weeks the alfalfa was six or eight inches in height, and 
was clipped with the mower, clippings left lying on the 



ii8 ALFALFA 

ground. In five weeks it was clipped the second time. 
In the summer of 1910 and 191 1 this field yielded sev- 
eral cuttings of hay and yet was pastured by a large 
number of hogs. 

If the season is favorable as to plenty of moisture 
alfalfa can be sown in April, provided it is sown with 
barley at the rate of one bushel of barley to the acre. 
Cut the barley when it is in the milk and cure it for feed. 
It makes fine feed. If the season is dry the barley will 
use up so much moisture that the young alfalfa plants 
will die. 

In the spring of 191 1, which was very dry, the author 
planted a field to alfalfa and barley and both plants 
came up fine, but it was so dry that the barley took all 
the moisture and the young alfalfa plants all died but a 
few, a stand was only secured on one acre of the field, 
and that portion of the field was low ground and in it 
a great deal of organic matter had been plowed under 
which held the moisture. 

Good stands of alfalfa have been secured by sowing 
in sweet corn after the corn was gathered in the latter 
part of August, but the seed was well covered, and the 
season was favorable in the way of moisture. 

The use of ground limestone is a great aid in secur- 
ing a vigorous growth of alfalfa, but in the majority of 
farms it is not necessary to use it. 

Alfalfa will so build up and restore worn-out soils 
that large crops of corn can be grown upon them, and 
will so maintain the fertility of average soils that they 
will not become worn. 

The author's personal experience with this plant and 



ALFALFA 119 

his observation of what it has done for other land than 
his own, leads him to urge the growing of this plant by 
every farmer. It is one of the plants that should be 
found on every farm for it never fails the farmer, no 
matter what the season may be. 




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CHAPTER XII 

SWEET CLOVER 

A FEW years ago a plant sprung tip along our 
roadsides in great profusion. It grew so vig- 
orously and spread so rapidly that farmers be- 
came alarmed and feared it would become a troublesome 
weed. 

Strange as it may seem, this plant seldom invaded the 
cultivated fields or rich spots of the farms. It was 
found only where the soil was the thinnest and poorest. 

It was soon discovered that this plant supposed to be 
a noxious weed, was designed to be a renovator of ex- 
hausted soils. That it languished and died on a fairly 
rich soil, but grew luxuriantly on soils so poor that noth- 
ing else scarcely would grow on them. 

Thus the sweet clover plant despised and rejected at 
first, at last became a chief corner stone in soil restora- 
tion. 

When planted on the poorest of clay soils where noth- 
ing grew, it soon made them so fertile that other grasses 
came and smothered out the clover. It has been known 
to so enrich bottom land whose top soil had been washed 
away by high waters that 60 to 75 bushels of corn was 
again grown on it. It has reclaimed poor, much-washed 
hillsides. 

Years ago the wreckage of a Dutch ship was cast 

123 



124 SWEET CLOVER 

upon the raw, white beach sand of King Island, located 
near the south coast of Australia. Among the wreckage 
were some mattresses that had been stuffed with sweet 
clover which contained some seed. This seed fell upon 
the sandy beaches and grew, and in the course of time 
spread over the whole of the coast of this island and 
transformed it from an island of useless shifting sand 
to a land rich in grazing for cattle, sheep and horses. 
This wonderful plant by its almost magical enriching 
powers has made of the white sand a dark brown soil 
and increased its value a hundredfold. A once barren 
island of sand now exports fat cattle and dairy produce 
and fine horses of the finest grades and quality that com- 
mand the highest prices in the markets of Tasmania. 

The powers of the plant as a soil builder is simply its 
ability to gather from the air and store into the soil great 
quantities of nitrogen, and produce through its root and 
branch system great quantities of organic matter esti- 
mated as high as twenty tons to the acre. 

It is simply a great nitrogen-gathering and organic 
matter producing plant, and herein alone lies its secret 
as a soil builder. And while the author has never ex- 
perimented with this plant, he is satisfied that its merits 
have not been exaggerated, because any plant that has 
the capacity to draw from the air large quantities of 
nitrogen and which produces a large quantity of organic 
matter in its foliage and root system, and which will so 
readily grow on poor soil, is a plant whose worth as a 
soil builder cannot be estimated. 

Any one possessing lands so poor that nothing will 
grow on them should not hesitate to give sweet clover a 



SWEET CLOVER 125 

trial. Do not worry about the plant becoming a noxious 
weed on the farm. It will only grow on the poor lands 
and these lands need it. 

In the building up of our worn soils and in keeping up 
the fertility of our fairly rich soils, we must bring to 
our use those plants that will gather the nitrogen and 
furnish the most organic matter and the best soil-cover- 
ing material, and sweet clover seems to be one of this 
kind of plants. 

The author has written the chapter on sweet clover for 
this edition of his book to make more emphatic to his 
readers the fact, that, the chief lack of worn-out soils 
is nitrogen and organic matter, and that whenever we 
make use of those plants, upon our worn-out soils that 
gather nitrogen from the air and produce great quanti- 
ties of organic matter, that we are then getting on the 
only road that leads us to soil restoration. 



CHAPTER XIII 

RED CLOVER 

WHEN the first edition of this book was pub- 
lished, the author was frequently asked why- 
he had not written a chapter on red clover, 
recommending its use for restoring worn and worn-out 
soils. 

The author's answer was, " Red clover was evidently- 
intended to be used for the maintahiing of the fertility 
of fertile soils, for it will not grow and flourish on 
worn and worn-out soils, and, as my book treats of the 
worn soil problem, I could not prescribe clover as a 
remedy to restore worn-out soils." 

Yet, if we should ask the farmer to name the best 
fertilizing and feeding plant, probably nine hundred and 
ninety-nine out of every thousand would promptly an- 
swer, red clover. The farmer so answers because he 
and his ancestors have for centuries made use of this 
plant for fertilizing and feeding purposes, and if any 
one questions its virtues and suggests that there are 
many other plants of greater fertilizing and feeding 
power, he is denounced as a deceiver, and the plants 
named for a substitute are denominated false pretenders 
and cheap imitators, notwithstanding the fact that there 
is no plant grown upon the farm that has to its credit 
so many bad points as clover. 

129 



130 RED CLOVER 

The young plant is tender and feeble, so millions of 
dollars are lost every year in the purchase of clover 
seed that starts to grow only to die from the effects of 
drouth or atmospheric changes. Its hay, though rich 
in feeding value, gives off a dust distressing and in- 
jurious to animals. It cannot be pastured without pro- 
ducing its death-dealing bloat. 

It robs the soil of its phosphorus and cannot be 
grown continuously on the same land without producing 
the " clover sick " soils upon which it refuses to con- 
tinue to grow, and it spurns the attempt to make it estab- 
lish its home in sandy, compact clay, prairie gumbo or 
worn-out soils, where it is needed the most. 

The author concedes that clover is valuable for main- 
taining the fertility of soils that are not worn, if used in 
the right manner. 

While clover grown for hay and seed alone may draw 
nitrogen into the soil and make the soil loose and friable, 
and thus improve soil ventilation, yet it must take valua- 
ble elements from the soil or it would not, after a time, 
refuse to grow on land where it had made its home for 
several years. 

If it had all the virtues claimed for it, why is it that 
in the regions where longest and mostly used we have 
the greatest number of acres of worn and worn-out 
soils? 

The author points the reader to the great Volusia re- 
gion with its acres of " clover sick " and abandoned 
soils, where loo acres in 1907 produced two small stacks 
of clover hay, and where lands that sold in 1803 for 
$37 per acre, in 1907 sold for $5 per acre. Lands that 



RED CLOVER 131 

were abandoned because they would no longer grow 
clover and the owners did not seem to know that there 
were other plants and methods that would restore their 
lands. Let the author quote what was said by a Gov- 
ernment expert about one of these Volusia farms. 

" In 1883 ^^is farm produced clover hay at the rate 
of 25^ tons per acre for the first cutting, and clover seed 
from the second growth at the rate of four bushels per 
acre ; nearly $700 worth of grain was produced and sold, 
and three cows, twenty sheep, and a team kept. The 
total yield of all crops for each of the past five seasons 
grown on this farm would not support more than twenty 
sheep and nothing was sold. No clover is grown, and 
it cannot he grown by the methods now in practice." 

He further said of these Volusia farms, that when 
they were first cleared they brought forth large crop 
yields of all the staple grains. That there was no difH- 
cidty in growing red clover, and that the region was well 
populated and the farms were prosperous. 

Another expert says of these soils, " that the failure 
of clover to grow on them is not due to any fungous 
disease of the clover plant, nor to the lack of the proper 
kind of bacteria in the soil, or to other influences of such 
a character, and that a chemical analysis of the soil by 
standard methods shows a sufBcient amount of the com- 
mon plant-food elements for successful crop growth." 

Upon these soils where clover refuses to grow, other 
crops refuse to grow as well, and farms are being aban- 
doned, buildings are going to decay and ruin. 

Some of these same conditions to a considerable extent 
abound in every region where clover is grown. Then 



132 RED CLOVER 

if clover is such a great plant for maintaining soil fer- 
tility as so many would have us believe it is, why do 
we have the conditions enumerated? Almost every 
farmer grows or attempts to grow it, and with the vast 
quantities that has been so long grown, our farms should 
show a high state of fertility if there be the fertilizing 
virtues in the plant claimed by its advocates. 

It is said that " Land becomes ' clover sick ' only in 
the absence of a proper succession of crops, and the ele- 
ments of fertility necessary for the support of the plant." 

There is some element in the soil necessary to the vig- 
orous growth of clover that is soon exhausted or our 
soils would not refuse to grow the plant, which shows 
the necessity of the proper handling of this plant with 
profit. 

Its success in soil building is only attained when its 
entire crop is left upon the soil or plowed under, for 
then it returns back again to the soil every element it 
extracts from it, and gives to the soil the element it ex- 
tracts from the atmosphere, the organic matter it pro- 
duces and the advantage of its covering. 

The author wishes to be understood as advocating the 
use of clover when it can be grown, but he does not hesi- 
tate to say that it is not a success as a first aid to the 
restoration of worn-out soils. If it could be made to 
grow on worn-out soils, and was not cut for either hay 
or seed, but its entire crop plowed under at the proper 
time, it would then be a valuable aid in building up our 
worn-out soils. And it must be used in the same man- 
ner or with a proper crop rotation if cut for hay or 



RED CLOVER 133 

seed, upon our fertile farms, if we would save them 
from the doom of " clover sick " soils. 

To get the best growth of clover we must have vegeta- 
ble or organic matter in the soil. The author is of the 
opinion that herein lies the secret of the cause of " clover 
sick " soils, they lack the necessary organic matter to 
produce the necessary soil ventilation and food to pre- 
pare a suitable home for the soil bacteria that clover 
must have for its successful growth. 

The author has been watching a series of experiments 
being conducted on some worn-out clay lands that were 
" clover sick." Years ago all the organic matter had been 
farmed out of these lands. Organic matter was again 
put into these lands by the growing of rye, vetch, sor- 
ghum and the use of manure, and all plowed under as 
deep as possible with a disc plow, and planted to corn, 
and again planted to rye and vetch and the entire crop 
of cornstalks, rye and vetch plowed under again. After 
a few years of this method of getting organic matter 
into this soil it was in such condition that fine crops of 
clover have been produced upon them. And that part 
of these lands upon which no manure was put, but only 
crops of rye, vetch, sorghum and cornstalks were plowed 
under, grew clover as well as the manured parts. 

The successful growing and judicious use of clover 
on the farm only makes it a valuable fertilizing crop to 
the farmer. A judicious use of clover means that if the 
farmer thinks he must grow it for hay or seed, then he 
must follow it with other crops that will either produce 
organic matter or allow the use of other organic matter 



134 RED CLOVER 

producing plants, so that a supply of organic matter may 
be secured for his soil. 

The most powerful way to use clover is to allow one 
clover crop to grow and die and then plow it under dry 
the following spring. 

In this manner you would get the additional great 
benefits of soil covering. Another effective method is 
to allow it to come into full bloom then cut it, leaving 
it lying on the ground for the second crop to come up 
through it, then cut the second crop so that it will have 
some time to decay before plowing it in for wheat. 
Either of these two methods of handling the clover crop 
will so enrich the soil that the effects will linger for 
years. 

An illustration is given of a Pennsylvania farmer 
who, after great effort, succeeded in getting a stand of 
clover upon the light colored soil of one of his poor 
worn-out fields and then turned the field back to Nature 
as it were, kept all his stock out of it, and allowed the 
clover to grow and reseed itself for several years. When 
the field was finally plowed it was found that the soil 
had become black for the depth of nearly a foot, and 
was so enriched that it produced large crops for many 
years afterwards. And herein is a valuable lesson for 
the American farmer if he will but learn it. The lesson, 
that man must follow Nature's way of soil building if 
he would restore or keep up the fertility of the soil. 






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CHAPTER XIV 

THE author's method OF RESTORING WORN AND 
WORN-OUT SOILS 

IT is said you cannot " eat your cake and yet have 
it." So some will say you cannot restore worn-out 
soils and at the same time grow profitable crops 
upon them. That worn-out soils can only be restored 
by expensive methods and years must elapse before any 
profitable crops can be grown upon them. 

The author has demonstrated that you can " eat your 
cake and yet have it." That worn-out soils can be re- 
stored and yet at the very time you are engaged in the 
process of restoring them you can grow profitable crops 
upon them. 

When he came into possession of his " Vetch fal fa 
Farm," it was, as heretofore stated, one of the poorest 
in the county. In the entire six years he has owned it, 
he has made it pay each year, after deducting all ex- 
penses and taxes, a profit of 6 per cent, per annum. 
He has increased its value from $75 per acre to $150 per 
acre, for he has been offered the latter sum for it. 

So if the author had placed in his possession worn or 
worn-out soils he would proceed to restore them in the 
following manner : 

If he lived in the vicinity of a canning factory that 
canned peas and sugar corn, he would first see that the 

137 



138 RESTORING WORN-OUT SOILS 

soil was thoroughly ditched ; then would plow it as early 
in the spring as possible and plant to early peas. The 
crop ought to be ready to remove by June 15. They 
have been removed as early as June 10. 

Immediately after the peas were harvested, he would 
have the ground thoroughly disced and planted to sugar 
corn. This crop should be well cultivated and kept clear 
of weeds. 

If the soil was much worn it is probable you would 
only receive from the crop of peas and sugar corn 
enough money to pay expenses, but you would be well 
started on the road of soil restoration, and that start 
must be made. 

Early in August he would plant in the sugar corn 
either vetch or rye. His preference would be vetch 
always. 

Under no circumstances would he pasture the stalks of 
sweet corn, although they are of great value for this 
purpose, but you must remember that you are engaged 
in the business of soil building, so do not let greed get 
the upper hand. Leave the stalks alone for plowing 
under with the vetch. 

In the spring of next season, about the ist of May 
he would plow under the vetch and stalks, and about the 
loth of May plant to field corn, giving same thorough 
cultivation, and when same was plowed the last time, 
would sow to rye or vetch. In this case he would as 
soon sow rye as vetch. 

He would not allow the corn or rye to be pastured, 
and the following spring would plow the whole under 
and plant again to field corn. Both these crops of field 



RESTORING WORN-OUT SOILS 139 

corn he knows would produce to your surprise and the 
surprise of your neighbors, and you would be well along 
on the highway of building up your soil. 

After the second crop of field corn the soil could be 
planted to wheat, followed with clover. 

If you do not live in the vicinity of a canning factory, 
then your first planting could be either cowpeas or hun- 
garian, but these crops should be turned under before 
the ripening of their seed, and the soil sown to rye or 
vetch ; the author's preference would be vetch. 

The following spring plow up and plant to field corn, 
the same at laying-by time to be planted either to vetch 
or rye, and the next season to be plowed up and put in 
corn, to be followed with wheat and clover, the clover 
to be plowed under. 

The author knows that this method of soil building 
will work grandly, for he has tried it. 

With this method the author can in two seasons grow 
from 50 to 100 bushels of corn to the acre on most any 
worn-out soils. 

On fairly good soils results will astonish you. 

If you wish to start alfalfa on a piece of worn soil, 
and live near a canning factory, sow to peas as directed 
and follow with sweet corn and vetch; keep off stock 
and plow under vetch before ripening of the seed, and 
keep cultivating your ground until middle of July or 
first of August and sow to alfalfa. Clip the alfalfa 
when five or six inches high, leaving clippings on the 
ground, and clip again before winter if growth should 
be considerable, or allow it to grow the first season with- 
out clipping. 



140 RESTORING WORN-OUT SOILS 

If you do not live near a canning factory, sow Hun- 
garian, and if ground is much worn, plow under before 
seed ripens and sow to vetch. But if soil is fairly rich, 
cut the Hungarian for hay just as seed has formed, and 
then disc thoroughly and sow to vetch. 

The following spring, in either of the above cases, 
plow under the vetch before it ripens its seed. Keep 
the ground cultivated until you are ready to sow the al- 
falfa seed, which may be any time from the middle of 
July to the first of August, the earlier the better. If 
you use care in selecting and sowing your alfalfa seed, 
you will obtain a splendid stand and crop of alfalfa. 

In case you plow under your Hungarian you lose a 
year's crop, but suppose you do ; you gain more than you 
lose in the fertility you gain and the condition in which 
you get your soil. 

If your soil is not poor and you cut your Hungarian, 
you will get a vast quantity of fine Hay, which, as stated, 
the author regards as the best hay that can be grown on 
the farm, alfalfa alone excepted. 

Peas, Hungarian and vetch planted in the manner 
stated blaze the way through the perplexities of com- 
pact, non-inoculated soils to successful alfalfa growing. 
There is no doubt about it ; try it and see. 

The author has elsewhere stated that it is a great mis- 
take to allow soils to be idle. There is only one ex- 
ception, and that is when you are starting a blue grass 
pasture. 

The soil should ever be occupied in growing a crop 
intended either for grain, feeding or plowing under. 

Field corn, after it is laid by, ought always to be sown 



RESTORING WORN-OUT SOILS 141 

with vetch, rye or clover, even if same field is to be put 
in corn the next season. 

If wheat ground is to be followed with corn, the same 
should be disced or broken immediately after wheat is 
removed and sown to vetch or rye, the same to be 
plowed under in the spring. 

By following this plan you gain the advantage of 
tillage, soil covering, and getting organic matter in the 
soil. 

The author's secret in restoring his " Vetchfalfa 
Farm " lies in the fact that he has each and every year 
produced and plowed under large crops of organic mat- 
ter. He has never allowed any of his corn fields to be 
pastured and has always sown them to vetch or rye after 
the corn was laid by, and then the following spring 
plowed under the cornstalks, rye and vetch. He has 
banished timothy from the farm and grown alfalfa and 
hungarian for hay. He has also plowed under hun- 
garian and above all he has spared the match and plowed 
under every weed that escaped cultivation and every 
cornstalk grown on the farm — this, supplemented with 
an abundance of green manuring, soil covering and some 
manure, has so restored the soil of this farm that it 
produces bumper crops of corn, potatoes and any crop 
the author wishes to grow upon it. 




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CHAPTER XV 

KING CORN 

CORN has been proclaimed the King of all Cere- 
als, and who can dispute his title ? 
While corn is of one species, its varieties are 
numerous. It is one of the most beautiful and useful 
plants that grows. Owing to its being so common, we 
lose sight of its beauty, yet in parts of the world it is 
cultivated as an ornamental plant. 

More people eat corn than any other grain except rice. 

Corn is the farmer's best crop, because it not only fur- 
nishes food for himself and beasts, but returns the most 
money for the least labor and expense of any crop on 
the farm. 

Corn is not adapted to all climates. But while it is 
affected by climate and soil, yet by continuous cultiva- 
tion from the same seed, year after year, it can be made 
to establish itself in most any locality. 

Corn, being distinctly an American plant, is produced 
chiefly on American soil. But not all our soils will 
produce corn. The " corn belt " is limited, embracing 
chiefly the great states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, 
Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri. Other states grow it, 
but not to the extent of the states mentioned. 

There was produced in the corn belt in the year 1909 

145 



146 KING CORN 

2,772,367,000 bushels of corn, and yet the price of corn 
is high, showing that the uses of corn are large. 

The consumption capacity of the world for corn is so 
great that there does not seem to be any danger of an 
overproduction. In fact, the demand for corn is greater 
than the supply, or the price would not be so high as it 
is now. 

On account of our soils losing in fertility, the average 
bushels per acre is not increasing as it should. 

If corn is the easiest, cheapest and best money-making 
crop grown on the farm, then farmers should become 
enthusiastic over any method that will bring about a 
greater yield per acre. 

In the preceding chapters I have shown the original 
process of soil building and the best methods of soil 
restoration. 

The methods of soil building I have detailed are not 
chimerical, but are real, practical, cheap and at the com- 
mand of every American farmer. They will put your 
soil in the right condition to grow 100 bushels of corn 
per acre. 

While good soil well prepared as a seed bed is the very 
foundation of a good corn crop, it is not the only thing 
needed to produce a large crop. You must have good 
seed. Seed selection is important in any crop. The loss 
occasioned by poor seed is enormous, and it can all be 
avoided with a little care. 

Too many of us depend on our seedsmen, and as they 
assume no liability on account of poor seed, we are help- 
less if our seeds prove to be bad. 



KING CORN 147 

The author purchases every year for his own growing 
seeds amounting to thousands of dollars, and his long 
experience in the purchase and growing of seeds has 
persuaded him that there ought to be a drastic law regu- 
lating the selling of seeds. There are so many dishonest 
persons dealing with dishonest seeds that the honest 
dealer is often imposed upon, but under present methods 
the grower suffers the entire loss of poor, unreliable 
seeds. 

Wherever it is possible to do so, the farmer should 
grow his own seed crop. When it is necessary to pur- 
chase, deal only with reliable persons and houses. 

Seed corn is so easily grown and cared for. It is said 
that the best time to begin selecting seed corn is while 
you are cultivating the corn, by noticing the most prom- 
ising stalks and ears; but as we are usually too busy at 
this time to do this, the practical time to select is at husk- 
ing time. 

In selecting seed corn, the stalks and husks should be 
first noticed. The ear should be on the stalk at a 
medium height from the ground, and the ear should bend 
downward. 

The husks should cover the ear entirely. The follow- 
ing rules for selecting good seed corn are as good as any 
that can be given : 

" The ear should be full and strong in middle portion. 
The circumference in the middle should be about three- 
fourths of the length of the ear. 

" The rows of kernels should be straight, and not less 
than 16 nor more than 22 in number. 



148 KING CORN 

" The length of ear should be not less than 8^ inches. 

" White cob in yellow corn or red cob in white corn 
disqualifies. 

" Twelve or more foreign kernels disqualifies. 

" The kernel should be twice as long as it is broad and 
of medium size. The edges should be nearly straight, 
so as to leave only a slight crease between rows on out- 
side of ear. 

" There should be no space between the tips of the 
kernels, either on sides or edges. 

" Kernel indentation should be regular and fairly deep, 
but not pinched, which would make crown chaffy. The 
kernels should be uniform in shape and size. 

" The ear should be firm and sound. The germ should 
be well developed, indicating strong vitality." 

Seed corn should never be exposed to freezing 
weather unless it be thoroughly dry, and should be put 
in a dry place, where ventilation is perfect. 

The time and method of gathering seed corn, as given 
by the Agricultural Experiment Station of Purdue Uni- 
versity, is so practical and good that we quote them in 
full: 

" To get the best seed corn it should be selected in the 
field after it has matured and while the characters of 
the parent stalk can be observed. This can be done to 
the best advantage by going through the field after the 
corn is mature and before the general harvest begins 
and picking ears of good size and quality from the stalks 
that are strong and vigorous looking, but not coarse. 
There should be a large leaf development. The leaf is 
the laboratory of the plant where the food it gathers is 



KING CORN 149 

manufactured. The stalk should be of medium size, 
strong at the base and tapering gradually to the tassel. 
It should stand up well and bear its ears at a convenient 
height for husking. The shank should be of medium 
length and strength. A short shank holds the ear too 
erect, while a long shank allows it to hang over too far. 
Ears on long shanks or high up on the stalk are more 
likely to pull down the stalk during a wind storm, be- 
sides being inconvenient to husk. The ears selected 
should be strong and well developed, with straight rows 
of regular sized kernels. The kernels should be rather 
deeply dented. The smoother kernels are generally shal- 
low and will not produce so well. The seed ears should 
always be a little rougher than the average of the crop, 
otherwise the variety will become smoother each year 
and the kernels shallower. The dent, however, should 
run squarely across the kernel, and there should be no 
sharp or pointed margins. 

" Seed corn should never be picked before it is mature. 
An immature kernel has not had time to store up all 
the food it wanted, and consequently will be more or less 
weak in vitality. Early picked corn, if well preserved, 
may germinate well under favorable conditions, but its 
constitution has been weakened, and the yield will be 
correspondingly lessened. Nature should be allowed to 
ripen the seed in her own way. 

" Selecting seed corn from the crib is always objec- 
tionable. The vitality has generally been more or less 
injured, and, while the ears selected may have a good 
appearance, one can tell nothing as to the character of 
the stalks which produced them. Numerous experi- 



I50 KING CORN 

ments have shown that crib corn produces smaller yields 
than corn that has been properly selected in the field and 
well preserved through the winter. 

" The quantity of seed corn selected from the field 
should always be considerably more than will be needed 
for planting, so that there may be room for further and 
more critical selection later on. If the quantity of seed 
ears selected before the general husking is insufficient, it 
is a good plan to have a small box attached to the out- 
side of the wagon box into which desirable seed ears 
found while husking can be put." 

When you buy seed corn, get it on the ear and from 
a place in your same latitude, and an early variety. 

All seed corn should be tested before planting. The 
importance of this is seen when we consider that gen- 
erally farmers do not get more than an average of 75 
per cent, of a stand of corn, when the average should 
not be less than 95 per cent. After corn has once been 
planted it is generally too late to replant the entire field 
if the stand is poor, and I have never known replanted 
corn in missing hills to make anything more than fodder. 

The method of testing seed as given by the Purdue 
University Agricultural Experiment Station is as follows : 

" There are many simple methods of making the 
germination test, but in all cases each ear should be 
tested by itself. Experiments have shown that as a rule 
the testing of a few kernels picked at random from dif- 
ferent parts of the ear will safely determine whether or 
not the ear should be used for seed. About five kernels 
should be taken from each ear and kept separate, and the 
ear from which they came must be marked in such a way 



KING CORN 151 

that it can be readily located after the test is made. In 
selecting the kernels for the test, take one from near the 
butt, three from various parts of the middle portion, and 
one from near the tip. Look for elevated or swollen 
spots on the ear from which to take the kernels. If 
there are any weak germs, they are likely to be found on 
the swollen spots, because there the cob was probably 
more or less spongy and retained moisture after the rest 
of the ear was dry and out of danger of being injured. 

" The requisites for germination are moisture, warmth 
and air. Any chamber or vessel in which these can be 
provided will answer the purpose. The exact method 
employed will be largely a matter of convenience. An 
ordinary dinner plate with a double fold of moistened 
muslin between which the kernels can be laid, covered 
with another plate to prevent too rapid drying, makes a 
very good germinating chamber. A shallow box into 
which several lots of kernels may be laid between folds 
of moistened paper and covered with a lid will do. A 
shallow box containing moist earth or sawdust in which 
the kernels may be planted may also be handy. In any 
case the tester should be put in a warm place, but not 
too near the stove. The temperature of the ordinary 
living room is about right, provided that it does not be- 
come colder than 55 degrees during the night." 

After seed has been properly saved and tested, and 
having your soil built up in the manner I have detailed 
in previous chapters, the next important step is the 
preparation of the seed bed. 

In a previous chapter I showed the importance of 
breaking up the soil at the right time, and assuming that 



152 KING CORN 

that is done properly, the same should be worked down 
to as nearly level as possible immediately after plowing. 
The best plan is to run over each half-day's plowing with 
some good pulverizer. A level, well-pulverized surface 
absorbs heat and retains moisture, both essential to good 
corn growth. 

A pulverizer should be used that will pulverize the 
soil to a depth of at least three inches. 

Where soil is dry at plowing time, or where a heavy 
coating of green crops or organic matter has been plowed 
under, I would advise the use of a roller or drag before 
using a pulverizer. No time is lost by running the 
pulverizer over your fields in opposite directions. We 
all hurry too much in preparing the seed bed. If we 
would run the pulverizer over our fields a dozen times, 
or for a week before planting, it would more than pay 
us for the time spent. Our soil would be level, mellow 
and in good tilth. The planter could be run with ease 
and at a uniform depth, and the seed would be placed 
in a bed of warm, moist earth, surrounded by every con- 
dition conducive to quick, healthy growth, thus securing 
a better stand of corn. The growth of weeds would be 
so checked that the corn would have a chance to reach 
the cultivating stage before they were of any size. 

Having the seed bed in proper condition, the next im- 
portant step is planting. In the main part of the corn 
belt the best time to plant is between the ist and loth of 
May. As a rule, planting cannot be done with safety 
before May i unless the spring is early and the soil is in 
excellent condition as to dryness and warmth. In the 
south part of the corn belt planting may be earlier. It 



KING CORN 153 

is not infrequently the case that good seed will fail to 
grow when planted too early or when the soil is too moist 
and cold. Heat, air and moisture cause the growth of 
seeds, and the seeds must have just the right proportion 
of each ; too much of either one is injurious to the plant. 

The earth should be pressed firmly over the seed, 
which causes the moisture to come in contact with the 
outer covering of the seed and produces a sufficient 
amount of heat by preventing air circulating too freely 
around the seed. The seed placed in the soil under 
favorable conditions commences to grow at once. 

Again, corn should not be planted too deeply. 

In my long experience in growing sweet corn I have 
learned that two-thirds of the poor stands may be at- 
tributed entirely to too deep planting. I make it a rule 
to plant not over one inch in depth, and when seed is 
good always get 95 per cent, and over of a stand. 
Planted five inches in depth, the seed will not germinate 
5 per cent. The same is true as to field corn. A cover- 
ing of one inch is sufficient. Covered three inches or 
more, growth is unhealthy and not rapid. 

Corn has two sets of roots, one above the surface and 
the other underground. The ones above the surface are 
the brace roots, and do not perform their functions until 
the plant is of considerable size, generally not until the 
corn is laid by. These roots are important to corn 
growth, because they push out and penetrate deeply into 
the ground at a time when the corn plant is bearing its 
harvest and needs to be supported from the onslaught of 
winds and storms. 

These brace roots shoot out from the plant above its 



154 KING CORN 

first joint, about an inch above the grain. Plant the 
grain too deep, a new and unnatural joint must be 
formed at the surface (it is never formed under the sur- 
face), from which the brace roots begin to grow. This 
new joint-forming process stays the growth of the plant 
until the new joint is formed. 

Heretofore I have tried to impress upon my readers 
the fact that we should study Nature's ways of doing 
things, so that we may avoid doing that which crosses 
her, for if we do we pay the penalty. 

A study of corn growth will convince any student of 
nature that corn is injured when its seed is planted to 
a greater depth than one inch. If this be true, then the 
practice of planting corn in a furrow and filling the 
furrow by cultivation is wrong. 

Next to planting the corn the proper depth is a good 
corn planter with which to plant the seed. 

A poor corn planter is about the worst nuisance on the 
farm. Get the best that can be procured, and consign 
all poor ones to the scrap heap. 

In selecting seed corn discard tips and butts and run 
seed through a grader so same is of uniform size before 
using in planter. The planter should be set for planting 
two grains to the hill. 

Extra strong soil will mature three grains to the hill, 
but under all conditions I have found that it is best to 
only plant two grains to the hill ; but in planting two 
grains to the hill it is very important that you have good 
seed or your stand may be poor. 

Between planting and cultivating there elapses gen- 
erally two weeks. Sometimes, on account of rains, this 



KING CORN 155 

time may be extended, especially if our soils are natu- 
rally wet and not well drained. When it is possible to 
work the soil we should not be idle during this time. 
We must not forget that a crust on the soil causes the 
soil moisture to evaporate very rapidly. A loose soil 
prevents this and absorbs moisture from the air. 

An insufficient quantity of available moisture is a great 
cause for short crops, hence the importance of doing that 
which will conserve the moisture so the corn roots will 
absorb it. 

Nothing conserves moisture in the soil like a soil mulch. 
This soil mulch is the great secret of corn cultivation. 
A large crop of corn cannot be grown without it, so the 
necessity of beginning to create soil mulch in the earlier 
stage of corn growing, or between planting and culti- 
vating time. It will practically stop all moisture evap- 
oration from the surface of the soil, and stirring the soil 
will kill the weeds, so to procure this soil mulch the 
harrow or pulverizer should be run over the planted corn 
before the corn sprout has pushed its way through the 
soil. 




"WELL! I WONDER WHICH LS THE BEST SEED EAR." 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE CULTURE OF CORN 

CORN can only reach its highest stage of develop- 
ment when it is properly cultivated. The corn 
root is the mouth of the corn plant, as its food 
is collected from the soil and fed to it through its roots, 
hence the necessity of protecting the corn roots and put- 
ting about them the environments essential to their best 
development and growth. 

The corn roots must be protected so they can perform 
their functions of collecting plant food undisturbed. 

Any method of cultivation that destroys any portion of 
the corn roots is disastrous to the corn plant, and reduces 
the yield in proportion to the amount of roots destroyed. 

Eminent professors of corn culture have by experi- 
ments proven that corn roots pruned to the depth of 
three inches, six inches from the hill, cut the yield six 
bushels to the acre, and four inches deep, eighteen bush- 
els to the acre. 

Cultivating deep and tearing off the corn roots after 
the second cultivation will decrease the yield from three 
to twenty bushels to the acre; so any method of corn 
cultivation that destroys the roots must be abandoned if 
we would secure the highest and best yield. 

As to the two first cultivations, corn may be cultivated 

159 



i6o THE CULTURE OF CORN 

deeply, but after that the cultivation should not exceed 
one or two inches in depth. 

Corn roots must have plenty of moisture, and they 
seek this moisture near the surface. During the grow- 
ing season the corn plant will absorb its own weight of 
water over and over again, and as this water passes 
through the corn system the corn food is carried into the 
cells of the leaves, where the sunlight transforms it into 
the material that the plant needs in its growth. 
. It is said that the leaves of the corn plant on an acre 
of soil will throw off during a season water that would 
cover the ground to a depth of ten inches. 

This, if true would prove that we must conserve the 
soil moisture if we successfully grow corn. This is the 
most important feature of corn culture, and one we must 
learn and appreciate. 

That system of corn culture must be adopted which 
will conserve the soil moisture so that it may be avail- 
able in sufficient quantities during each day of the growth 
of the corn plant. The moisture must not be allowed to 
evaporate from the ground. 

The only way to preserve soil moisture and prevent 
evaporation is to keep stirring the ground to the depth 
of one or two inches, so as to procure the soil mulch or 
blanket of finely pulverized soil on top of the ground. 
We must ever keep in mind that corn has but two sets 
of roots, feeding and bracing. The feeding roots are 
small and tender, and run out from the plant in a ho- 
rizontal direction and when full grown exceed the height 
of the stalk. They first appear but a few inches below 
the surface and never penetrate to the depth at which 



THE CULTURE OF CORN i6i 

the soil was broken until the corn is in silk. An exam- 
ination of the field during the growing season from the 
second cultivation to the " laying-by " time will show 
these feeding roots occupying the entire soil between 
the rows of corn. 

When the corn reaches its silking stage these roots 
will appear in great quantities. They are searching for 
food and moisture to complete the growth of the corn 
plant; hence the necessity of their protection and con- 
serving the moisture for their use. 

No weeds must be allowed to grow, as they rob the 
corn roots of food and moisture needed for the corn 
plant. Cultivation must be kept up as long as possible, 
so that the soil moisture may be maintained until the 
corn plant has stored sufficient food to mature its ears 
of corn. 

My most successful method of corn culture is to first 
run the harrow or weeder over the corn a few days after 
planting and before the com has come through the soil. 
One good harrowing with the harrow or weeder before 
the corn is up does more good than two or three plow- 
ings as it kills all sprouting weeds and stirs all portions 
of the soil. In fact a weeder can be used to great ad- 
vantage in cultivating corn from the time it is planted 
until it reaches a height of several inches, running over 
the corn several times during that period. 

The author knows of a farmer who uses the weeder on 
his corn from the time it is planted until it is knee high, 
going over his corn as many as five or six times during 
that period. 

When the farmer was first noticed doing this he was 



i62 THE CULTURE OF CORN 

asked in a spirit of derision if he intended to gather his 
corn with a weeder. But this farmer's corn is always 
entirely free from weeds and produces fine yields no 
matter how dry the season may be. 

When the corn is large enough plow the corn each way 
as deep as possible getting as close to the corn as you can. 
All cultivation after this must be such as stirs the soil 
to the depth of an inch, the cultivation to be frequent 
and kept up until the corn is well along towards matur- 
ity. When corn is too large to cultivate with two-horse 
cultivators, a one-horse cultivator that barely scratches 
the soil should be frequently used. 

Good corn culture means an early starting and a late 
discontinuance of the cultivators. 

I have known corn yields to be cut short by lack of 
early and late cultivation. When the growth of corn has 
been once stunted the damage done cannot be repaired. 

I once gave one-half of a field of corn two late culti- 
vations with a one-horse combined harrow and cultivator, 
and increased the yield nearly ten bushels per acre over 
the half not cultivated. 

The corn's crisis is when it has completed its stalk 
growth and begins making the ear. If at this time the 
dry season begins and soil becomes so compact and dry 
that moisture and air is excluded, conditions favorable 
to the proper maturity of the ear are cut short. At this 
critical time the cultivators should be kept moving. 




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CHAPTER XVII 

SWEET CORN 

SWEET corn is used almost entirely for human 
food, so vast quantities of it are consumed upon 
our dining tables. A favorite way of cooking it 
is to boil it on the cob, and served in this manner it is 
regarded as one of the " courses of the most refined and 
epicurean dishes." The great canning industry of the 
United States also consumes great quantities of it, their 
average yearly pack being over six million cases, of two 
dozen cans each. 

The sweet corn plant cut up and properly cured for 
fodder makes a valuable feed for all stock, one of the 
most valuable that can be grown on the farm. Stock 
will entirely consume it. As a winter feed for horses it 
excels in value any feed grown. It puts and keeps 
horses in good condition. It cannot be overfed, and 
horses and cattle will almost entirely subsist upon it 
through the winter season, coming out in the spring in 
fine condition. It is one of the best milk-producing 
feeds grown, producing quantities of well-tasting rich 
milk. Where dairying is carried on to a large extent 
sweet corn fodder is considered worth ten dollars per 
acre. Some even claim that one acre is equal to eight 
acres of grass, and worth more than two acres of any 
forage crop grown. 

165 



i66 SWEET CORN 

Sweet corn fodder should be cut when the leaves are 
glazing and put in small shocks for curing. 

In habit of growth sweet corn is smaller than field 
corn, but otherwise its characteristics are similar. It 
requires the same soil, attention and cultivation to grow 
it as field corn. 

Like field corn, its varieties are many. The varieties 
chiefly grown for canning purposes are Stowell's Ever- 
green, Early Evergreen, Crosby's Early and Country 
Gentlemen, the first and last named being the leaders. 

While Stowell's Evergreen has large ears, it is the 
sweetest and most valuable of all. The author's large 
and long experience with it for canning purposes has 
convinced him that this variety gathered in the right 
stage comes nearer filling the requirements for a perfect 
sweet corn than any variety that is grown. While it is 
true that the Country Gentlemen variety has the reputa- 
tion and sells for the most money, yet Stowell's Ever- 
green plucked at the right stage has a flavor that cannot 
be excelled. 

In the main sweet corn belt it can be planted from 
May I to July i. Planting in wet, cold soils must be 
avoided, as the seed will rot. The planting of the seed 
should never exceed an inch in depth. As stated in the 
previous chapter, a poor stand of sweet corn can be at- 
tributed nine times out of ten to too deep planting of the 
seed. 

The seed must have just the right amount of heat and 
moisture to germinate it properly, yet there is no diffi- 
culty in securing a stand if one is careful in planting it 
when ground is warm and not too wet. 



SWEET CORN 167 

■ There seems to be a disposition to plant sweet corn 
too thick. This is a mistake. There should never be to 
exceed three grains to a hill, and when drilled set drill 
to drop about one foot apart. 

Good seed ought to test 95 per cent. ; where it tests 
less than this I would advise hand picking the seed, pick- 
ing out the brightest and best grains. It pays to do this, 
and it can be done in bad days of spring when other work 
cannot be done. 

Canning factories pay from five to ten dollars per ton 
for sweet corn jerked from the stalk, and delivered to 
the factory in a green stage fit for canning. Some fac- 
tories have a system of grading or testing by which a 
bushel is taken from each load and shucked and weighed, 
when it must come up to a certain fixed standard, but 
generally it is bought by the ton just as it is jerked in 
the field. The ten-dollar price is paid for the smaller 
eared variety like Country Gentlemen, which do not pro- 
duce a large number of tons per acre. The highest price 
paid for heavy yielding varieties, like Stowell's Ever- 
green, is eight dollars per ton, and at this price there is 
money in growing it, as it will produce from four to six 
tons per acre, to which add the value of the fodder and 
you have one of the most profitable crops grown on the 
farm. If it does not prove a profitable crop it is because 
it has been planted on poor soil or its cultivation has been 
neglected. It will respond and produce fine paying crops 
if given a chance. The author has known farmers to put 
it on their poorest, worst drained soil, give it practically 
no cultivation and then curse and condemn it as a non- 
money maker. He knew one farmer who planted five 



i68 SWEET CORN 

acres and never cultivated it once, and then he expressed 
himself that there was no money in growing it. 

Sweet corn to be fit for eating or canning must be 
harvested when the shucks are green and while the 
grain is in the milky stage. It is of no value for eating 
or canning when the shuck is yellow and the grain is 
hard. It must be brought to the factory the day har- 
vested. If allowed to stand in the wagon over night it 
heats and becomes valueless. While it is true that fac- 
tories hold it over the night, yet they put it on cement 
or ventilated floors, where it is spread out thin so that 
air reaches into the interior of the pile and where there 
is no danger of its heating. 

Sweet corn has an enemy in the worm found in the 
end of the ear at certain seasons of the year, and which 
is said to be the same worm that destroys the cotton 
crop, the Boll worm, which does serious damage to its 
ears. While this worm is found to some extent in all 
sweet corn, it is chiefly found in sweet corn grown in 
warmer latitude. For this reason sweet corn grown 
south of a line parallel with the Ohio river cannot be 
grown for or handled by canning factories with profit, 
as the work of removing the corn damaged by the worm 
adds too much expense to the finished product. 

In the sweet corn growing section this worm appears 
late in the season, but it has been known to make its 
appearance before the season was more than one-half 
past, and to put a complete stop to further operations of 
factories. It always appears to a considerable extent in 
late planting. For that reason sweet corn for canning 
purposes should never be planted later than June 15 to 



SWEET CORN 169 

20. No remedy has yet been discovered by which this 
worm or its parent can be destroyed. 

The chief sweet corn growing states for canning pur- 
poses are Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, New York, Mary- 
land, Wisconsin and Indiana. The states are named in 
the order as to quantity produced for canning. While 
Maine has the reputation of packing the best corn, yet 
all the other states mentioned can and do pack just as 
good corn as Maine. 

The canning of sweet corn so as to be palatable is an 
art in which but few are skilled. The best of sweet corn 
can be spoiled in canning. Like the preparation of any 
food, so as to be a delight to the taste, it is generally up 
to the cook. 

Sweet corn to be good must be sweet, and this sweet- 
ness cannot be artificially supplied by the addition of 
sugar, for the original sweetness cannot be imitated. 

No northern state has any advantage over another as 
to possessing a soil or climate that will produce sweet 
corn containing an abundance of natural sweet, for 
southern states will grow sweeter sweet corn than any 
northern state. It is a fact, however, that sweet corn 
grown on sandy soil will contain more sugar than that 
grown on muck or heavy black soils. If Maine packs 
better corn it is because she has better cooks in her can- 
ning factories, and possesses more skill in knowing how 
to handle the raw material so as to prevent it from de- 
teriorating before it gets into the can. 

Sugar begins to disappear from sweet corn as soon as 
the ear is separated from the stalk. A chemical change 
sets about at once and the sugar is transformed into 



I70 SWEET CORN 

other substances. The rapidity of this changing process 
can be arrested to a certain extent only by handling the 
corn quickly and keeping it at as low a temperature as 
possible. A large body of plucked sweet corn will heat 
very quickly and become worthless, because the chemical 
change brought about by the heating destroys the sugar 
in the corn. If any northern section of the country has 
any advantage over another in producing good sweet 
sugar corn, it is because it has such a low temperature 
that the corn can be kept in a tender and cool stage for 
a longer period of time. 

An excessive rainfall is injurious to sweet corn. Dur- 
ing a dry season if a healthy growth can be maintained 
the product will contain more sugar. By proper cultiva- 
tion during dry weather a healthy growth can be main- 
tained and a large growth of corn can be produced. 
The author demonstrated this during the seasons of 1908 
and 1909 to his complete satisfaction. The season of 
1908 was very dry, and his crop of sweet corn was the 
best quality and the best yield he ever produced. The 
season of 1909 was too wet, and his crop did not come 
up to quantity produced to the acre by a ton or more, 
and the quality was not as good. 

When the skin of the grains of sweet corn is broken 
it undergoes fermentative changes at a rapid rate be- 
cause of its high percentage of sugar, and this also 
affords an opportunity for dangerous bacteria to enter 
into the corn juices, resulting in sour corn, the canners' 
worst enemy. No amount of heat that can be applied 
by canning apparatus will destroy them. It is said that 
the source of the germ of these bacteria is from the ears 



SWEET CORN 171 

of corn, their presence being found on the kernels be- 
neath the husks. 

All this shows the necessity of great care in getting 
sweet corn into the factory in the right stage, condition 
and manner and the proper handling of it in the factory. 

Sweet corn has a low conducting power of heat, hence 
the necessity of a long period of heating in order that 
bacteria that produce spoliation be killed. If not suffi- 
ciently heated the center of the can is not sterilized and 
souring begins there. 

The reason the housewife does not successfully can 
sweet corn is because she does not submit it to a proper 
heating process. If she would boil it seven hours in a 
kettle it probably would keep for her. 

A woman once asked the author the name of the acid 
he used in his canning factory to preserve sweet corn in 
the can from spoiling, and when she was informed that 
no acid was used, but that the preserving process was 
obtained solely by sterilization or heat, she was incredu- 
lous and went away firmly believing that the author was 
lying. 




A GOOD TYPE OF SWEKT CORN SEED, STOWELL'S 
EVERCikI'LEX. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

A CHAPTER OF DON't FORGETS 

DON'T FORGET — That soil is as jealous as 
a lover; neglect or mistreat it and its bounty 
is withdrawn. Caress and feed it, it yields a 
hundredfold. 

Don't Forget — That a farmer becomes a soil robber 
when he does not each year put back into the soil more 
organic matter than he farmed out of it. 

Don't Forget — That the corn stalk is one of the 
farmer's best by-products. A ton of them contains six- 
teen pounds of nitrogen and nearly as many pounds of 
potash, and the organic matter in them is of inestimable 
value for supplying humus to the soil. 

Don't Forget — That the moisture-conserving ca- 
pacity of the soil is increased by the plowing under of 
large amounts of organic matter. 

Don't Forget — That organic matter in the soil aids 
soil ventilation, and furnishes supplies of nitrogen for 
the growing plant. 

Don't Forget — That rye, hungarian and the legumes 
are the best producers of organic matter. 

Don't Forget — That the farmer who refuses to sup- 
ply the wants of his soil is traveling along the highway 
of the abandoned farm. 

175 



176 A CHAPTER ON DON'T FORGETS 

Don't Forget — That it takes less than fifty years to 
farm out the fertility of the soil if none is added in the 
meantime. 

Don't Forget — That England's soil, after a tillage of 
centuries, is as fertile to-day as in any stage of its exist- 
ence, kept so by sane methods of soil building. 

Don't Forget — That the entire prosperity of our 
country is founded on the fertility of our soil, and that 
he only is a patriot who lends his aid to conserve that 
fertility. 

Don't Forget — That the conservation of soil wealth 
means a full dinner pail in the hands of every working- 
man, a loaf of bread on every dining table and comfort- 
able clothing on every human body. 

Don't Forget — That the conservation and increas- 
ing of soil fertility means the building up of an empire 
in our Middle West, richer in power and splendor than 
any ever dreamed or imagined. 

Don't Forget — That environment and greed has 
made us soil robbers, that we must get away from that 
environment and greed or perish. 

Don't Forget — That he who gets closest to the soil 
reaps its richest reward. 

Don't Forget — That he only is a farmer who loves 
and feeds his soil. 

Don't Forget — That the proper feeding of the soil 
requires the exercise of a fertile brain. 

Don't Forget — That a farmer who does not love his 
soil will mistreat it. 

Don't Forget — That a soil robber is always a man 
of greed. 



A CHAPTER ON DON'T FORGETS 177 

Don't Forget — That soil building is but the applica- 
tion of simple common sense to the solution of simple 
agricultural problems. 

Don't Forget — That no one is worthy the name of 
farmer unless he is willing to do that which will give his 
soil a chance to do its best. 

Don't Forget — That for soil to do its best it must 
be fed the food elements it needs. 

Don't Forget — That the soil robber is the highway- 
man of agriculture. 

Don't Forget — That crop rotation alone will not 
build up your soil. 

Don't Forget — That you cannot get too much or- 
ganic matter in your soil. 

Don't Forget — That the farmer should be trained 
for his work as the lawyer is trained for his profession. 

Don't Forget — That he who expects to build up his 
soil by crop rotation alone is doomed to failure and bitter 
disappointment. 

Don't Forget — That it requires as much intelligence 
to direct the business of building up the soil as it does to 
direct the affairs of trade or commerce. 

Don't Forget — That the more intelligence you put 
into your soil the more money value you will extract 
from it. 

Don't Forget — That farm values are based on soil 
fertility. 

Don't Forget — That the soil, like the horse, gives its 
best service when it is well groomed and fed. 

Don't Forget — That he gets closest to the soil who 
studies its whims, its moods and its needs. 



178 A CHAPTER ON DON'T FORGETS 

Don't Forget — That soil building is the most vital 
problem of the age. 

Don't Forget — That the legume crops furnish the 
" balanced ration " needed for soils. 

Don't Forget — That a breathing soil means a living, 
fruitful crop. That soil cannot breathe unless it is 
ditched and full of organic matter. 

Don't Forget — That the ratio of increase of your 
soil will be in proportion to your interest in scientific 
farming. 

Don't Forget — That the great secret of soil restora- 
tion is to keep your soil busy growing crops for both 
harvesting and plowing under. 

Don't Forget — That the soil that produces the poor- 
est crops is like an inferior farm product — it doesn't 
bring the price. 

Don't Forget — That improved agriculture is brought 
about by fertile brains as well as fertile fields. 

Don't Forget — That when Nature built the original 
soil she used a lavish supply of organic matter in its 
construction. 

Don't Forget — That to pull every day a full two- 
horse load requires two horses well fed and groomed. 
To make the soil pull its load of good crops it must be 
fed and groomed each day. 

Don't Forget — That the real farmer is one who 
manages so as to put back each year into the soil more 
fertility than was extracted from it by growing crops. 

Don't Forget — That the bedrock of the paying farm 
is soil, well fed. 

Don't Forget — That your success in soil restoration 



A CHAPTER ON DON'T FORGETS 179 

depends on your gumption to catch onto Nature's ways 
of soil building. 

Don't Forget — That the farmer who has no thought 
beyond the year's profit, has his soil headed towards the 
doom of soil exhaustion. 

Don't Forget — That you increase the value of your 
soil in proportion to what you feed it. 

Don't Forget — That skilled workmen are required 
in all trades, why not on the farm ? 

Don't Forget — That our entire substance comes from 
the soil. If it fails us, we perish. 

Don't Forget — That the American farmer has yet 
to learn the lesson of " proper feeding of the soil." 

Don't Forget — That soil is as sensitive and resentive 
of neglect as a human being. 

Don't Forget — That in the history of nations no 
crisis ever came but what God produced the man to 
handle it, so in the crisis of soil exhaustion God has pro- 
duced the plant or material that will restore it. 

Don't Forget — That you cannot get anything out of 
worn-out soil until you put something in it. 

Don't Forget — That you must forget the way the 
pioneer farmed. You must think only of the way the 
soil must be farmed to-day. 

Don't Forget — That the purpose of this book is not 
so much to tell people exactly how to enrich the soil, as 
it is to rightly direct their thoughts and investigations 
that they may help themselves to solve the soil problem. 

Don't Forget — That your severest test is in getting 
your worn-out soil started towards increasing fertility. 

Don't Forget — That in pushing along the worn-out 



i8o A CHAPTER ON DON'T FORGETS 

soil towards fertility, it's the keeping at it that furnishes 
the momentum that accomplished results. 

Don't Forget — ^That it is said that the net income 
of the average farmer is greater than the net income of 
the average city man, but that average cannot be main- 
tained without increasing the fertility of the soil. 

Don't Forget — That much of soil building is being 
done like he who is trying to pull a two-horse load with 
one horse hitched to the end of the tongue. 

Don't Forget — That you cannot build up your soil 
as long as you continue to carry to the barn everything 
that grows upon it. 

Don't Forget — That covering the soil with green 
crops is one of the farmer's best methods of soil building. 

Don't Forget — That organic matter gone up into 
smoke leaves no residue of value to the soil. 

Don't Forget — That crop rotation is a gay deceiver. 

Don't Forget — That it has been said that the soil is 
a living thing. The better reason why it should be fed. 

Don't Forget — That prosperous looking farms and 
farm buildings are but the reflex of a fertile soil. 

Don't Forget — That the man behind the plow is no 
longer a force in a community when his plow is turning 
infertile or worn-out soil. 

Don't Forget — That it is folly to select and plant 
good seed in soil too poor to grow and mature them to a 
paying crop. 

Don't Forget — That the men who once grew big 
crops on our worn-out soils were poor farmers or else 
these soils would now be rich in fertility. 

Don't Forget — That the policy of properly feeding 



A CHAPTER ON DON'T FORGETS i8i 

the soil is not only good for future generations, but for 
the farmer who practices it. 

Don't Forget — That the farmer who does not ever 
have in view the conservation and increasing of soil fer- 
tility is obstructing his own way to success. 

Don't Forget — That he who produces the best crops 
is the one who ditches and feeds his soil the best. 

Don't Forget — That the farmer who says he cannot 
afford to plow under green crops, will soon say there is 
no money in farming. 

Don't Forget — That there is no limit to the possi- 
bilities of our well-drained soils so long as we do not 
limit their feed of organic matter. 

Don't Forget — That you cannot overfeed your soil 
with organic matter. 

Don't Forget — That the truly successful soil builder 
is the one who drains his soil, tills it well, feeds it large 
quantities of organic matter and keeps it busy with grow- 
ing crops. 

Don't Forget — That the physical condition and 
available plant food of the soil can only be maintained 
by feeding it with plenty of animal and vegetable matter. 

Don't Forget — That the foundation of soil building 
is draining. 

Don't Forget — That draining a soil is like currying 
a horse — it opens the pores and increases circulation. 

Don't Forget — That organic matter is farmed out 
of the soil in less than four years ; hence the necessity of 
adding to the supply each year. 

Don't Forget — That well-drained soil full of or- 
ganic matter is never sour. 



i82 A CHAPTER ON DON'T FORGETS 

Don't Forget — That it is the folly of follies to use 
commercial fertilizer on soils lacking in organic matter. 

Don't Forget — That it takes as much plant food to 
grow weeds as corn ; kill the weeds. 

Don't Forget — That the boy and the girl are two of 
the best products of the farmer, if trained along the 
lines of scientific agriculture and farm domestic science. 




THE FARMER'S BEST PRODUCT, IF EDUCATED ALONG 
THE LINES OF SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE. 



CHAPTER XIX 

CONCLUSION 

IF in the perusal of the preceding chapters the reader 
has imbibed some of the author's enthusiasm for 
soil building, crop-growing and love of nature, then 
the mission of this book has borne good fruit. 

There is no grander nor more useful study than the 
study of the soil problem. It is a study that is of more 
vital interest to the public than any other, for the very 
fabric of life depends upon its correct solution. 

Since penning the proem and introduction of this book 
a mighty agitation has swept over and into every part of 
our country regarding the high price of living. 

The price of farm products and manufactured goods 
being higher than known for years, our people are en- 
gaged in a great discussion trying to ascertain the cause 
of these high prices. 

The concensus of opinion seems to be that the chief 
cause of high prices is the fact that too many of our 
people have left the farms for our cities, so the cry has 
gone up that the only solution of the question of high 
prices is " more producers and less consumers." " Back 
to the Farm " is the slogan. 

Our educational system is faulty. The boy and the 
girl have been educated away from the lines of agricul- 
ture and farm domestic science. 

185 



i86 CONCLUSION 

The ambitious country boy with bright, sharp intellect 
has had held up to him only the ideals of business and 
professional life. The soil problems, the love of nature, 
the joy and financial returns of farming fertile fields and 
the peacefulness of good farm surroundings have had no 
place in his education, so he has grown up believing that 
no true happiness or financial gain is to be found on the 
farm. 

The farmer boy so educated has drifted into the 
never-ending strife and worry of city men and business, 
and our farms have lost the best bloom of our young 
manhood.- 

True, some of the boys have attained success and emi- 
nence, and maybe happiness, but the vast majority of 
the mighty army of boys who have drifted from the 
farm into the cities bear the marks of disappointment 
and blasted lives ; they have not gotten out of life what 
they would have gotten had they been educated along 
the lines of scientific agriculture and remained on the 
farm. 

While we are changing our methods of farming, so 
as to build up our soils, let us so change our educational 
system that it will educate our boys and girls to live 
rural lives and help to solve the problem of the soil and 
of farm domestic science, that the fields of our farms 
will be made richer, our herds and flocks be built up of 
better grades, our homes inside and out be made more 
pleasant and more attractive. 

When this is done the great procession of boys and 
girls will be headed towards the farm, and the profes- 



CONCLUSION 187 

sions, the mercantile and manufacturing business will be 
relieved of the congestion of workers. 

Nearly forty years ago the author, a boy of fifteen, 
bid an affectionate adieu to his mother on the old farm 
porch and set his face towards the city and entered its 
busy activities. He engaged in mercantile pursuits for 
a time, attending school and college, educated himself 
for the profession of law, engaged in the successful prac- 
tice of his profession for many years, engaged in manu- 
facturing, farming, political strife and office holding, and 
now finds himself past the meridian of life with a great 
fund of experience to his credit. 

But now as the border land of eternity appears to view, 
realizing that it will be but a short time until " life's fit- 
ful dream " will be o'er, he yearns to spend the remainder 
of his days upon the farm, that he may regain some of 
the lost pleasures of farm life. Upon the farm, where, 
far removed from the bitter, galling strife of men, he 
may commune with nature, study soil problems, smell 
the bloom of vetch and clover, admire the beauty of 
growing plants, hear the songs of birds and the soothing 
rustle of the corn, and bask in the delights of sunshine 
and open sky. 

Farmers of America, you do not realize what God and 
Nature have done for you. Your lines have indeed 
" fallen in pleasant places," but oh, so many of you have 
failed to grasp your opportunities. Ye are God's chosen 
people and yet you do not act it. 

If you are tempted to leave the farm, command the 
tempter to get behind you. Stay with your fields, your 



i88 CONCLUSION 

flocks and herds, improve your surroundings and make 
them more attractive; train your boys and girls to be 
good farmers and housekeepers and enjoy the peaceful, 
restful life of the farm. 

There's music in the words, " Back to the Farm," but 
there is sweeter music in the words, " Better Stay on the 
Farm a While Longer." 

" The farm is the safest and surest. 
The orchards are loaded to-day; 
You're as free as the air of the mountains, 
And monarch of all you survey. 

" Better stay on the farm a while longer, 
Tho' the profits come in rather slow; 
Remember you've nothing to risk, boys. 
Don't be in a hurry to go." 



m ^ "^9^2 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DDDm3S4SflA • 



